Brownian Motion
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: Forty witnesses. Two bombs. Zero eye witness accounts. Story complete, all the ends tied up with a loose slip knot...
1. Chapter 1

Brownian Motion

By OughtaKnowBetter

Obligatory disclaimer: some day, when the statute of limitations on intellectual property runs out, they'll be mine!

A/N: many, many thanks to my beta's FraidyCat and Alice I. Any mistakes are mine, for not listening to their good sense. A few readers may remember a certain FBI forensics researcher from the fanfic: "Brightest Crayon". Some of you even made my day by requesting a return performance—your request has been granted, with my heartfelt gratitude to those of you who took the time to let me know that you enjoyed my efforts.

* * *

"Brownian motion." Dr. Charles Eppes adjusted the protective goggles over his eyes, ignoring the dark curls that dropped haphazardly over the plastic lenses. Likewise ignored was the giggling of a few freshman girls—and one equally young boy—who had selected this particular course for two reasons: one, it fulfilled the mandatory math requirement toward graduation with a liberal arts degree and two, the professor made Dr. McDreamy look about as romantic as oatmeal.

Charlie Eppes was oblivious. The problem in front of him was far more interesting and where math and science were concerned, the building could be on fire and Charlie wouldn't notice until his experiment exploded in front of him, whereupon Dr. Eppes would then start to calculate the heat co-efficient of the blaze as well as the patterns of ventilation which would alternately stoke and direct the fire.

Not pertinent. Today's lecture was on Brownian motion, a phenomenon well known to physicists and scientists in general: Professor Eppes swung into the verbal portion of his demonstration.

"Consider the apparently random nature of Brownian motion," he told the class. He indicated the large fish tank in front of him. The tank was filled with water, and nothing else. Sunlight shone through the far windows of the classroom, causing the dust motes to sparkle above the still water in the tank. The class, well-used to Dr. Eppes's predilection for things that go boom, remained in their seats at a safe distance. "When we place a single drop of a foreign substance into water, we can see how it disperses quickly." Using an eye-dropper, he plopped a large drop of dark colored liquid into the tank. Within seconds the liquid faded and vanished. "For those of you—and I will assume that this is 100 percent of the class—who have taken high school physics, this is a classic model of Brownian motion. The molecules go from a high concentration in one spot to a homeostatic equilibrium so that the molecules are evenly distributed throughout the solution. Of course, the parts per million are so low that we can't see any of the dye; the only way we know that it's there is that we saw the drop being added.

"Now let's try adding a larger concentration, something that we have a better chance of seeing under technologically primitive conditions, otherwise known as 'with the naked eye'." Professor Eppes poured in a large beaker-full of the same dye. The class, knowing what was coming, watching with varying levels of interest. The more devious ones, suspecting that 'class participation' might figure prominently in their grades, tried to appear intrigued.

It was tough. The scarlet red dye slowly meandered a new path through the clear water in the tank, taking far too long to disappear for minds more accustomed to the rapid maneuvers of War Craft III online.

Not for Dr. Eppes. He peered intently at the display, changing position once to better observe the phenomenon.

"We assume that this motion is random," he finally said, ignoring the collective sigh of relief from the various freshman and the few left-over sophomores who had wrongly thought that they'd be able to avoid taking first year calculus. "In fact, it is not. It is the result of the molecules of the dye being acted upon by the molecules of the water. Each bumps up against each other and causes a minute change in direction. Theoretically we could calculate the trajectory of the desired molecule, if we had sufficient information about the individual molecules of water acting upon the dye. Unfortunately, we don't."

His class, judging by the expressions on their faces, didn't think it unfortunate at all. They had each experienced a moment of mortal terror that their final grade might be based upon the supposition that they were capable of churning out the aforementioned calculations. The more devious ones were already half way through deciding which senior math student might be enticed or blackmailed into an intense tutoring session.

"Now let's assume that we have a less random effect," Professor Eppes continued. He dropped a small tablet into the water, right over the greatest concentration of the dye.

The effect was immediate. Whatever the tablet was, it reacted with the water to produce a slender spray of water into the air, and the front row of students either leaned back or forward, depending on their interest in preserving the sanctity of their clothing. Most of the dye disappeared under the action of the tablet, spreading out and vanishing into the clear water, but enough remained to demonstrate the passage of the current. "This, as you can tell, will be much more easily calculated, since this reaction just introduced a clear action upon the molecules. And this, as you have suspected, is the basis for this week's homework, due Thursday. Look over Chapter Twelve, and bring in answers to questions one through four. Bonus points for anyone who creates their own problem for the class and brings in the solution proof," he called after their retreating backs.

Charlie Eppes grinned. He could always tell which ones were going to end up in his upper level courses. Those were the students with the thoughtful expressions as they left class, the ones already considering the problems that he'd set them. The others simply wanted to make their escape.

There was one other person considering the problem that Professor Eppes had set, and that person had carefully removed himself from the doorway in order to accommodate the outflow of students. Charlie grinned as he took note of the new arrival. "Hey, David. Come on in. Enjoying the lecture?"

David Sinclair shrugged, pleased. "I always enjoy your lectures, Charlie. I may not always understand them, but I enjoy them just the same. Someday I might even learn something."

Charlie snorted. "I learn something every day," he informed the FBI agent. "I learn from you, I learn from Don, I learn from my father—" He broke off, interrupting himself with a smile. "Enough about me. No, wait—more about me. What can _I_ do for _you_?"

David swung into action. "Don sent me. You have some time?"

Charlie consulted his watch. "No, but if you're asking whether I _want _to review that latest journal entry by Isabel Kerrigrew in which she demonstrates yet again that she really has no concept of what the Eppes Convergence is about, then the answer is yes." He gathered up the short stack of papers, handing them to David before grabbing the three large text books. "Let's drop these off at my office before we go."

David relieved him of one of the texts, evening the load. "What about the fish tank? Don't you have to clean that up as well?"

"That?" Charlie's smile was bright. "I just keep telling the maintenance people that I'm running an experiment calculating the rate of water evaporation containing a foreign substance. It'll be so much easier to move when the water's gone."

* * *

Charlie didn't need David Sinclair as his own personal chauffeur, but he did need the agent to get the math professor past the large number of police and security people that swarmed around the edges of the bank that was the center of the crime scene. There were people all around: people held in by the yellow FBI tape guarding the area, people with cameras and voice recorders and note pads held back by the yellow FBI tape, and a large number of LAPD uniformed types to make sure that the flimsy yellow FBI tape had enough help to properly do its job.

There were also a hefty quantity of emergency medical types administering oxygen and various other comforting techniques to what appeared to be the previous inhabitants of the bank. Both customers and bank tellers were seated, some on the ground and others fortunate enough to find a slender space on the bumpers of the attending ambulances, some shuddering and trembling and others merely slumped against whatever was handy. One young mother clutched her son to her side, tears sliding down both faces. The boy fit tidily under her arm—pre-school age, perhaps? Charlie couldn't tell, and decided that it didn't matter. That was his brother's problem.

Charlie glanced up at the sign over the bank: First Community. He breathed a sigh of relief. The last consultancy fee that he'd received—private industry, this time, for a _very_ substantial sum—had been deposited into another financial institution. Selfish, sure, but he didn't need that worry interfering with whatever work Don and the rest would want him to do. Any lawyer defending those perpetrators would be sure to try to disallow Charlie's calculations based on where he did his banking, never mind that the math was clearly cut and dried.

It was a large building, very bank-like in the traditional sense, with three stories worth of bricks soaring up toward the heavens. There was nothing wrong with the outside of the edifice, nothing that cleaning up of some yellow FBI tape wouldn't fix along with the removal of the ambulances. The tall glass windows were intact, and the sign hadn't even suffered from vandalism. There was a large white heart of graffiti, proclaiming that G.T. loved L.B., but the paint looked old and Charlie doubted that it had anything to do with the current crime scene. He wondered what was going on.

The inside scene was a different story. There were three or four forensics people working on the center of the tiled floor, measuring and examining what was clearly, even to Charlie's untutored eye, the aftermath of a small explosion. Black soot covered the flooring in an outward pattern, the dark particles staining the tiles in a rough circle and edging up onto the desks and stands surrounding the pattern. There were three spots of clear white where people had obviously been standing and another four where people had fallen to the floor and smudged the soot pattern.

Don broke away from where he was discussing the case with two uniformed LAPD officers to come to meet Charlie. "Charlie, glad you could help out. You're not too busy?"

"Any time, Don." Charlie kept looking around. "Bank robbery?"

"You got it. This time," Don added cryptically. He moved on to the summary. "Our perps came in and dropped a box with the soot bomb, then scrambled out of the way."

"Two bombs, right?" Charlie interrupted.

"Two?" Don was startled. "Where are you getting two from, Charlie?"

"He's right," one of the forensics people grouched, picking up a shaggy head. "There are two soot rings: concentric, _Eppes_. That indicated two separate explosions, one on top of the other. Didn't you see that? You've been here longer than I have, and you didn't bother to look? Don't waste my time, Eppes." A diamond stud glittered in one earlobe, and the head took notice of the consultant standing with Agents Eppes and Sinclair. "_Dr_. Eppes? You here? Finally?" A pink tongue glistened over moist lips. "Did you bring Dr. Fleinhardt with you?" _I hope, I hope?_

"Don't need him, Gatsbacher," David put in hurriedly, remembering the one and only time he'd introduced Gatsbacher to Dr. Fleinhardt. David was still collecting both jokes and angry looks from fellow agents and other forensics specialists over that episode.

Terry Gatsbacher was as much of an enigma as any forensics puzzle and perhaps more so. It started with sex: the response on the employment application said _yes, please. As much and as often as possible_. _Is this one of the benefits offered?_ The application went downhill from there, and more than one supervisor wondered how Gatsbacher had ever gotten hired in the first place, muttering about revising the hiring practices that the local Human Resources department currently used.

That was only the beginning. Gatsbacher favored a look that was androgynous with clothing baggy enough to disguise any potential identifying curves or lack thereof. Goth mascara only served to engender more confusion, as did the six earrings: three in one ear, two in the other, and a third through the nose. David considered himself lucky not to need to look at the Forensics expert in the mouth, for fear of what would be pierced through the tongue. He/she/its speech was clear, however, leading David to wonder if Gatsbacher had chosen not to go that route. Even Gatsbacher's height could go either way: slightly taller than Charlie, yet shorter than Megan. It didn't help that Gatsbacher seemed to delight in the gender confusion, almost always wearing high collars that would cover over any Adam's apple or lack thereof.

The one redeeming feature that Gatsbacher possessed was the ability to decipher data from forensic evidence far beyond what any human had a right to expect. The expert seemed to spend an average of twelve hours daily on FBI tasks and no one dared to ask to what the other twelve were assigned. The chance of receiving an answer was too great. The result was a high clear rate for more than one FBI team, and so the field agents took what they could get and thanked the good Lord that Gatsbacher was on their side. An additional spiritual thank you was offered when the data that Gatsbacher produced was delivered via email and not in person.

"Do too need Fleinhardt," Gatsbacher purred, enjoying the dismay that the words put onto the faces in the FBI crowd. "This is an explosion, clearly in the realm of physics. I need Fleinhardt, not this human calculator."

Don already knew how to handle the situation. "Not this time, Gatsbacher," he said easily. "Maybe later, if this stuff is too much for you to handle."

"Too much? Too much? I'll have you know, Eppes, that I can—"

"C'mon, Charlie." Don drew both Charlie and David away from the expostulating forensics expert, moving them onto the details of the crime. Out of earshot, he suddenly grinned. "Megan would slit my throat if I let Gatsbacher anywhere _near_ Larry."

"He's right, you know," Charlie said, totally oblivious to the sub-text in the previous conversation. "Two concentric circles, Don. That means there were two explosions, one on top of the other."

"Yeah? How do you know that Gatsbacher is a 'he'?" Don challenged.

Charles Eppes, however, had stood up to far more intensive lines of questioning by people with far greater power than his brother, and this question wasn't even accompanied by head noogies. "Whatever. The point is, two explosions. Soot bomb?"

"Right." Don swung into the actual case. "LAPD is still questioning the witnesses, but the basic story is clear. Some guy with a hat and coat walked in and dropped a box onto the floor. He runs. Everyone else takes notice, and also start to run. The bomb goes off, smoke fills the air, and then everything gets fuzzy."

Charlie nodded. "Your witnesses aren't giving you a coherent story. Everyone saw things a little bit differently."

Bombshell—literally. "Nope. They're not giving me any story at all," Don told him. "Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Big goose egg."

That didn't make sense, and Charlie said so. "Surely someone could tell you—"

"Nope," Don repeated, "and that's what's making this so puzzling, Charlie. It doesn't make sense. Each and every one of these people heard the bomb go off, started to run, and then that's the last thing they remember." He shook his head. "I'd swear that every single one of those witnesses was gassed or something, not to be able to recall anything at all, but none of the random tox screens have ever come back positive, with the exception of a couple of over-aged flower-children who never left the sixties. The bomb must have put something into the air to make them go to sleep, but even Gatsbacher's toys aren't showing anything."

"What about cameras? What did they show?"

Don grimaced. "These guys knew what they were doing. Black masks, identical dark suits. One guy tossed the bomb, and two others took out the cameras. We're getting nothing off of them."

"Anybody hurt?"

"No. Fortunately, no one. Not this time," Don added darkly.

"This time? There's been more than one?"

"Not exactly," David grumbled, getting in his two cents.

Charlie just looked at them. _A pattern, here?_

Don sighed. "Third robbery. This time, a bank. Previous one: high end jewelry store. First one—"

"—that we know of—" David inserted morosely.

Don accepted the correction. "—that we know of," he amended, "was a ticket office, right before the end-of-the-day receipts were tallied up. Lots of people making lots of cash purchases, so the thieves got away with a lot. Every time we're getting the same story: a smoke grenade gets rolled or dropped in, and then it's collective amnesia. Not one person can give us a description of the perps."

Charlie grinned, cracking his knuckles ostentatiously. "So we've got a pattern," he informed the pair. "Let's look at the details." He glanced around at the scene, noting the bystanders and the witnesses, all trying to make sense of what was going on. Now he frowned, realizing that the details that he needed weren't here. "How about heading over to your office?" he suggested. "I'm going to need stuff on the previous two crimes, not just this one."

Don nodded. "You got it, Buddy. Colby," he called to his team mate, "finish up here, will ya? David and I are going to take Charlie back to the office."

"Sounds good to me," Colby grinned. He retrieved another shred of the shell of the bomb, dropping it into a small plastic bag. "Enjoy riding a desk, Don."

* * *

Charlie leaned back in Don's chair, contemplating the data set out in front of him. Don and David eyed him nervously.

It was a familiar place, Don's office. Charlie had been there on many more than one occasion. It wasn't often that he'd sat in Don's chair, the one that really should have been replaced years ago except for more important budgetary constraints, but Don had moved him there two hours ago and then had gone off and come back again from his search of coffee and something more interesting than watching Charlie's hair grow as the mathematician inhaled the pertinent information. David too had trotted after his boss, swearing that he'd bring back coffee for the visiting consultant. He'd forgotten.

It was all there, all three crimes laid out in three hard charts containing separate case files. Mere manila folders weren't sufficient to enclose all the information; there was too much of it. And yet, there wasn't enough. Charlie frowned.

"Buddy?" Frowning was not what big brother Don wanted to see.

"I can try." The tone sounded doubtful, and that too was unwanted.

David voiced the straight line. "But—?"

"The pieces aren't falling together sufficiently," Charlie explained.

"Don't you have to plug in some sort of formula or something?" Don asked, squashing down the sense of desperation that was trying to bubble forth. He hadn't realized how much he was counting on Charlie for a lead. Nothing else was popping up on any of the investigations. "I mean, you only just got here. You only just started looking through the data."

Charlie shook his head. "Patterns, Don," he said, as if the phrase ought to have been enough. "That's what I do: patterns. Everything we do falls into patterns of one kind or another, and usually more than one." He pushed one of the case files away from him, almost rejecting the data. "No real patterns here. These crimes don't really look related."

"But they have to be," David protested. "Look at them, Charlie! They're all the same! The perpetrators walk into the building, drop a bomb, nobody sees them, and they walk out with the goods. It's the same M.O., every time," he added. "They even take out the cameras in the lobby, every time."

"Looks like a pattern, but not really," Charlie told him. He warmed to his subject. "Different settings, and criminals tend to stick to what they know best. They hit jewelry stores, or banks, but not both."

"Not always," Don grumbled. "Sometimes they vary their M.O."

"Even taking that into account, let's look at the number of people involved," Charlie went on. "Three people were involved with the jewelry store, and four for the ticket office. How many at the bank?" he asked ever so innocently.

Don and David looked at each other. "Six," David muttered.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you."

"Six," David said in a louder voice. "Six, Charlie."

"Six," Charlie repeated. "Not three or four. I'm going to assume that nobody's put a want ad in the classifieds, looking for hired guns."

Don scowled. "Not that I noticed."

"I'm also going on the assumption that you regularly scan the criminal version of a newspaper, looking for things such as that."

"Just keeping an eye on who's on the way up, and who's on the way down."

"Of course." Charlie dismissed that facet of the discussion as a given. "Initially, it looked like there was a pattern for discrimination: three crimes, all using smoke bombs, all eliminating the cameras as they walked into the lobby. Then the coincidences stopped. The rest is all random: different numbers of perpetrators, different types of establishments robbed. There's nothing to distinguish this from three different groups of criminals doing three different criminal acts beyond the use of the smoke bomb. Copy cat stuff. One guy gets a bright idea, and a couple of others decide to do the same thing." He hit the shut down keys on his laptop, and the machine gave a melodic chirp of dismay. "I'm sorry, Don. I can't help you. Not right now. If there are more crimes that you think are related to these, call me but at the moment there simply isn't enough data. What you've got here are a bunch of coincidences and nothing more. Several different groups are using smoke bombs as their method of getting the crowds under control, and that can be written off as a statistical outlier. Sometimes coincidences happen. There's always that one chance in a million, and you hit it lucky today. The three crimes look planned, it looks like a pattern, but when you delve into it there's nothing more to support the theorem. You just have a few different groups that are using tried and true methods for crime." He pushed down the screen to his laptop, all three of them hearing the click that put the machine to bed. He reached for its case. "I'm sorry, Don," he repeated. "Bring me more data and I'll try again."

"You mean, something that supports some kind of pattern," Don grumbled.

"Well, yes," Charlie admitted. "You don't need me to stick three pins in a map."

David automatically glanced at the map that was tacked to the wall. "One in East L.A., another in Hollywood, and the third down in Orange. Not very close."

"And not likely to generate realistic probabilities for the next target," Charlie agreed. He stood up. There was no point in prolonging the time and there were several articles that he really needed to review.

* * *

"Don! Hold up, Don!" Megan increased her stride to catch up to her boss in the hallways of the FBI building.

Don obligingly slowed. "Megan? What'cha got?"

"Not good, Don." Megan fell into step beside him. "The bank job? First Community Bank? We've got a fatality."

"Damn," Don breathed. Up to this point, there had been none. A whole bunch of scared witnesses, too scared to remember their mothers' names, but everyone had walked away from the experience with less money and a new phobia to bring to their shrink. "Who? How?"

"Prelim from the M.E. says smoke inhalation, but she's saying it with a whole lot of 'maybe'," Megan informed him. "Our victim wasn't young, wasn't sick, and should have been able to handle a little bit of smoke. He wasn't even close to the center of the explosion, which would have exposed him to a larger quantity, like a fire fighter. He got to oxygen fairly quickly, according to the records."

"So what you're saying is that there's more to this than meets the eye." Don swiftly reviewed what that meant in terms of the case, an action which didn't impede his forward progress toward his cubicle. "Well, at a minimum, this turns this thing into homicide. That's a step up from the other two." Despite Charlie's disclaimer, Don hadn't yet given up on the three different crimes being related. There was a small butterfly in his gut flying around screeching about some sort of spider web connecting the three, and that there would be more crimes committed in a similar fashion. Don would admit to more than one mistake in his career as an FBI agent, and failure to listen to his gut was one of them. His New Year's Resolution had been to not let that happen again. "What happened to the guy?"

Megan shrugged unhappily. "Not a clue; not yet, at any rate. I made the M.E. promise to finish the autopsy next so that we'd have her report by this afternoon. That was the best I could do," she added with a sigh. "The tox reports won't be back for a couple of days, even if the M.E. thinks that there was something else involved. Just between you and me," Megan confided, "I think that the M.E.'s betting on some sort of natural cause, like an aneurysm blowing under the stress. This might not be a homicide at all, just another unlucky coincidence."

"Getting tired of coincidences, Reeves," Don mock-growled. He was well aware that every member of his team felt the same way, that there should be some sort of clue that they could nab to lead them to a decent set of suspects. "Stay on it. Keep me posted."

"Right. You?"

Another sigh, this one big enough to blow the papers off the desk in the cubicle down the hall. "Director's dumping another case on us. Kowalski turned up a lead on a meth lab downtown, and the director doesn't want him blowing his cover. We get to hit the place tomorrow, at sunrise; see what we can drag in and if we can develop any leads from there."

"Gawd," Megan groaned. "You're right, Don. These three maybe-related cases are going to get pushed to the back burner." She glowered. "This means we're going to have to be here at five in the morning, for the bust?"

"Gotta love it, Reeves."

"No, I don't, Don. I don't love it one bit. It's enough to make me question my choice of career," she informed him glumly.


	2. Geek vs Geek

Given that the small sign on his door told the world that Dr. Charles Eppes was currently holding office hours for the terminally confused CalSci student as well as those actually interested in advanced mathematical theory, the knock on the door to Dr. Eppes's office was not unexpected. It was, however, unwelcome. A singular point in Cognitive Emergence Theory was on the verge of clarity, and Charlie was desperately struggling to get it down on his whiteboard before the details slipped away.

But the knock sounded, and the detail flew off into the Netherlands of the dark recesses of his brain. Charlie bit back an expletive inappropriate to a professional and settled for a sigh. He'd posted the office hours, he'd offered them, and now he was stuck actually providing student services instead of working on the Cognitive Emergence stuff.

Which wasn't actually unpleasant, for Charlie knew that he'd be getting into one-on-one teaching as soon as the kid stepped through the door. Charlie _enjoyed_ teaching with a passion as great as his joy in pure research. _It's the transition I hate_, he reasoned with himself; that, and the knowledge that the detail that had slipped away would re-emerge at approximately three AM, in the dead of night. Charlie resolved to replace the pad of paper on his nightstand, which he still hadn't done from the last time he'd had an early morning epiphany two weeks ago. He shoved a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and called, "door's open. Come on in."

A walking series of juxtapositions entered, sliding through an astonishingly narrow aperture between door and frame. The being standing before him was slight, almost as short as Charlie himself, and seemed to be slender although Charlie couldn't honestly tell underneath the baggy jeans and greasy sweat shirt that seemed overly protective in the L.A. climate. Black hair too long to be classified as bangs fell into the face which didn't appear to have a five o'clock shadow. At eleven in the morning, that also was unrevealing of identity. The only truly comfortable part of the apparition that Charlie could feel for was the burning desire for knowledge that haunted two startlingly blue eyes. Charlie blinked; he knew this person, had seen he/she/it somewhere and in the recent past, and the creature's name was on the tip of his tongue if only he could remember it. _Was it this morning's freshman calc class? I don't think so…_

Charlie took refuge in a stock line. "Can I help you?" He delivered the line with just the right amount of doubt; a number of the students took a great deal of comfort in trying to confound others, and Charlie was certain that this student slouching in front of him hadn't engendered much more attention than most while walking across the CalSci campus.

The head swiveled around, taking in the cluttered surroundings. The body relaxed; dishevelment was familiar to it, and Charlie's office fit the bill. "Looking for Fleinhardt," was the mutter.

No help there; the tones were either a low alto or a high tenor. Charlie automatically assigned a probability of fifty-three percent chance of the creature being female, based on demographic data for the United States. The probability of being a _student_, however, plunged: any student, mindful of the need to achieve a passing grade or preferably higher, would politely refer to Charlie's colleague as _Professor_ Fleinhardt.

The burning eyes drilled straight into Charlie's. "There's two concentric circles," Charlie was informed, "and I can't decipher the explosion pattern. It's consistent with the previous two crime scenes, however the exact composition of the pyrotechnic device remains a mystery as well as the details of the explosion vehicle."

Charlie blinked. This was not the monosyllabic mutterings of a street bum. This was the highly trained verbiage that could only come from—

"Gatsbacher?" he asked, hoping for the correct identification.

"Well, yeah." _Like, who else would come around, looking for Fleinhardt? He's just not that popular._

"Dr. Fleinhardt isn't here right now," Charlie told the forensics lab rat, as if the answer wasn't obvious. "Have you tried his office?"

"Yeah. Not there." The head continued to survey the clutter, as if calculating the probability of one Lawrence Fleinhardt leaping out at them from underneath the pile of sophomore mid-terms on the floor. "Thought I'd try you."

"What can I help you with?" Charlie asked automatically. "Do you want me to call Don?"

"What for?"

This was becoming more and more puzzling. Charlie tried again. "What do you need Professor Fleinhardt for?" Because Charlie certainly wasn't going to expose his friend and mentor to Gatsbacher unless absolutely necessary. One traumatized CalSci professor was enough.

Withering look. "Well, what the hell do you _think_ I need him for?" Gatsbacher shot back. "Where's Fleinhardt?"

"Uh…I haven't seen him yet today," Charlie confessed. He hastily changed the subject to something a little safer. "You're talking about the crime scene that Don called me to yesterday? You were talking about the two concentric circles," he offered, hoping that Gatsbacher would take the bait.

Bait taken. Gatsbacher swung into the dilemma. "As you correctly observed at the crime scene, the explosive pattern took the form of two concentric circles, one applied over the other," was the opening statement. "This is indicative of two explosions. The secondary explosion was significantly smaller than the first, as evidenced by the resulting smaller diameter of the second soot pattern."

"How much smaller?" Charlie interrupted. "What was the purpose of the second explosion? Usually the second explosion is designed to kill any first responders—"

"In terrorist ploys," Gatsbacher nodded, equally good at interrupting. "Not in this case. No, this second explosion, in my opinion, was planned to destroy any remnants of the first bomb, in order to confuse and derail any exploration into the origins of the explosion. Most commercial explosives have various additives in them, in order to facilitate identification post-usage. This did not."

"Indeed," floated in a third voice. The person who belonged to the voice entered Charlie's office: Professor Larry Fleinhardt. Charlie froze; this was not what he had imagined would happen. Bringing Fleinhardt together with Gatsbacher was not what he had in mind. He cringed, waiting for the warning klaxons to start screaming for everyone to take cover.

World War III did not begin. An earthquake of nine on the Richter scale did not cause Los Angeles to fall off into the Pacific Ocean. Ice shelves did not suddenly reattach themselves to the polar caps and declare, _sorry, that global warming thing was all a misunderstanding_.

Fleinhardt, recognizing Charlie's visitor, scowled delightedly.

Gatsbacher, realizing that the prey had arrived, uttered a snarl of pleasure.

"Gatsbacher," Larry snapped. "Haven't they fired you yet?"

"Fleinhardt," Gatsbacher returned. "Haven't they recognized your obvious incompetence yet?"

"Incompetence? Incompetence? Why, without my help, your last case would have been a disaster—"

"Last case? That was three months ago, Fleinhardt! You came to me—"

"Only because I don't dabble in petty techno-toys—"

"You needed help to turn on a light switch—"

"Gentlemen!" Charlie broke in with a horrible sense of déjà vu. This had happened before. The two geeks, recognizing a kindred spirit in each other, demonstrated their obvious esteem for each other by threatening demolition for the civilized world. "The problem at hand—?" he suggested, determined to bring them back on focus. "Two concentric circles?"

"Yes." Gatsbacher went to the task at hand. "Two explosions, one likely designed to cover the first."

"Remnants of the first explosion?" Larry dove in, curiosity kindled.

"None. I scoured the three scenes myself, hoping that something had been flung outside the concussive diameter, without success. Whoever designed the explosion was exceedingly careful."

"Or lucky," Larry suggested.

"Not likely," Charlie said. "Once: luck. Twice: _really_ lucky. Third time: skill." He turned back to Gatsbacher. "So you're saying that the three bombs are related."

"Undoubtedly," Gatsbacher confirmed.

"Which means that the three cases really are connected, as Don suspected," Charlie mused. "Does Don know that?"

"He does if he reads his email. So he probably doesn't."

Small problem dealt with. Charlie moved back to the most interesting aspects of the mystery. "We need a way of tracking this back. You said that the explosives had an additive for identification purposes?"

"No. Shut up and listen, Eppes. You're as bad as your brother," Gatsbacher sneered. "You never listen to what's being said. All you do is listen to yourself. I said that _most_ commercial explosives have additives. This one didn't."

"Which suggests that this explosive is more likely to have been concocted by someone working in an unregulated environment," Larry said unhelpfully. "It rules out commercial operations. It rules out the military."

"It likewise rules out any _theft_ from the military," Charlie added thoughtfully. "That leaves only the criminal element."

"Well, _duh_."

Charlie blinked. "No, I mean that it leaves a criminal with a science background," he clarified. "Someone who is capable of creating an explosive and then designing a method of delivery for it."

"Someone who could design a two step bomb that would obliterate any trace of how it was made," Larry nodded. "Clever." He turned to Gatsbacher. "Do you think that this criminal is better than you are, Gatsbacher?"

"Not a chance, Fleinhardt. But probably better than you," the forensics expert shot back.

"Is that a challenge, _Gatsbacher?"_

"Take it any way that you like, _Fleinhardt."_

* * *

Don drained his mug, wondering how fresh the coffee was in the cafeteria, knowing that another dose of caffeine was needed. Two o'clock in the afternoon was late when he considered that he'd been up and dressed to kill with his gun in his shoulder holster at five this morning.

The raid on the meth lab had gone as planned, and there were now six perps in the lock up because of it. None were particularly high level, but that was okay. The undercover agent's cover was still intact, and a nasty little lab was in the process of being dismantled, no longer a threat to blow up the neighborhood through sheer carelessness. The whole shebang was headed for the hands of the D.A.'s office, trying to get each of the little slime-muffins to roll on someone and turn this into a major bust instead of the tiny annoyance that it really was. He'd assigned David and Megan to finish interrogating the perps; Don took on the unenviable chore of writing up the report for the case file. Colby he'd left to supervise the dismantling process, overseeing the bagging and tagging of enough lab equipment to outfit a small high school science department. _If I'd told Colby to write the report, I'd be waiting until Tuesday for it to be done._

He tabbed through his computer inbox, noting and quickly deleting the various topics from HR inviting him to this year's soccer tournament against LAPD—_they kicked our asses last year. Gimme baseball any day_—heading right through a notice that the health benefits from his HMO were still available but at a higher cost. _Hah. When's my next annual cost of living raise?_

Having deleted close to half of the emails, he then turned to the important ones: his case file on the Murdoch thing had been accepted and the guy was facing fifteen to twenty assuming that his lawyer didn't pull a stunt worthy of O.J. Simpson's attorney and try to get a new trial a half dozen times. Don could stamp 'closed' on that one. It was now someone else's headache. There was a note from Employee Health that his annual physical was overdue. Don filed that one; it was only the second notice, and he had another two weeks before the threats to bench him would start.

This email looked interesting; it was from the M.E. that Megan had talked into a hurry-up on that two bomb thing at First Community Bank, the case that he'd had to table yesterday in favor of the meth lab. Don opened the email, waiting impatiently for the attached file to figure out how to expose itself for his viewing pleasure.

_Victim is a twenty-nine year old male, Caucasian_—Don skipped over that part, scanning through to the meaty parts. _Bronchus demonstrated high numbers of mast cells_—what the hell were those?—_with extensive inflammation resulting in closure of the bronchial airways. Extreme infiltration by immune complexes further complicated the clinical picture_. Don glowered. _Hope somebody knows what this means, 'cause I sure don't._ He moved onto the next paragraph. _Tracheotomy performed, with insertion of a number six ET tube_. _No evidence of improper placement; medical record states despite adequate ventilatory effort, PaO2 levels continued to drop._ That didn't sound good. Hopefully, Don wouldn't have to go figure out if the M.E. was trying to say 'medical malpractice'. With a sigh, he scrolled down to the bottom, hoping for something that that he could actually comprehend. A cause of death might be nice.

Hah: there it was. _Cause of death: hypoxic event leading to cardiovascular collapse_. Don glowered, wondering why that statement seemed so unsatisfactory. It just wasn't long enough to justify the fact that there was a dead body in the morgue and a grieving widow waiting for that body to be released. Was it or was it not a murder? He'd have to call the M.E. if he wanted the particulars; he flipped back to the original email, hoping that her extension would be part of her email. It ought to be…

Don then felt very foolish. If he'd bothered to read the email in the first place, he wouldn't have wasted fifteen minutes trying to decipher the path report. There it was, in the body of the email, a translation for the medically illiterate, as the examiner's office was prone to put it: died of an allergy attack. Homicide? The M.E. wasn't saying, although allergies tended not to make it to the ten most wanted list. Don scanned through the rest of the blurb. The victim died when he breathed in something that made his lungs shut down, and that may or may not have been related to the crime scene.

Another coincidence. Nobody else at any of the crimes that Charlie had said weren't related had died. This dude could have been allergic to cats, and the stress of being involved in a robbery sent him over the edge.

Except that cats didn't tend to cluster in banks. Banks tended to be pretty sterile areas, without stuff that would cause someone's throat to close up. Don flipped back to the M.E.'s report, this time scanning for whatever it was that had caused the man to have an asthma attack, and not finding it. The M.E. had specifically done some testing to try to figure out that piece of the puzzle, and was still baffled.

_Listen to the gut_. Don's innards were screeching at him, and he recalled his long ago New Year's resolution to pay attention and not assume that it was an ulcer in the making. He sighed, and picked up the phone. "Hey, Colby, you know that guy that died at the bank job yesterday? M.E. says it was an allergy attack. Listen, I need you to talk to the guy's family, see if he had a history of asthma…"

* * *

The place looked like a bomb shelter. The walls were made of thick cinder blocks, the type that David hadn't seen since wandering through the freshman dorm at college, more years ago than he cared to admit to. Not that he'd lived on campus; no, Sinclair had done some fancy footwork for coming up with tuition, and living off-campus was part of it. However, that didn't mean that he wasn't familiar with the style of living. There were some _foxy_ chicks that lived in those dorms…

No, the reason why one David Sinclair, Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was headed down toward the Forensics labs of the same agency was because he had been summoned by a voice of indeterminate gender leaving a voicemail on his cell phone telling him to get his ass down here, that Gatsbacher had something of import to impart.

"_Took_ you long enough, Sinclair."

David chose to interpret that remark as a delighted welcome, and responded in kind. "You got something for me, Gatsbacher?"

"Stupid question." Gatsbacher maneuvered itself around the lab bench, careful not to upset the three test tubes that jiggled nervously on the bench. Behind, a bank of lights suddenly lit up, calling to Gatsbacher. The Forensics specialist whipped around and snarled at the machine, "shut up, already! You're a little late, dorkwad!"

David could have sworn that the machine, thusly addressed, cringed in shame. It might have been that some of the lights blinked more rapidly, trying to hold back machine tears, or it could have been the fourth line of yellow lights that went out altogether, but David would not have sworn in court under oath that the machine wasn't responding to Gatsbacher's tirade.

David chose to ignore what was clearly a figment of his imagination. "You got something for me?" he repeated, hoping desperately to get the discussion back on track before something untoward blew up.

"Of course I got something," Gatsbacher replied, leaving the word 'idiot' unvoiced but not un-communicated. "Look at this." The Forensics expert pointed to a graph that had been printed out. Peaks and valleys roamed across the paper in a pattern that would do the Rockies proud.

David risked a glance around the lab: good. There were no unsecured firearms within reach. If David said what he really thought, the worst that Gatsbacher could do was screech at him. The sound might shatter glass, but David could escape unscathed. He took a deep breath. "I don't ask you to interrogate a suspect, Gatsbacher. You know damn well that I haven't a clue what this thing means. Just give me a report and be done with it."

The indignation looked posed, David thought. Gatsbacher rocked back on his/hers/its heels, black mascara-rimmed eyes widening in an expression of horror and disbelief. Gatsbacher spewed forth several words that sounded mildly Slavic in origin but were unquestionably describing the intelligence of David, his parents, his parents' parents, and any offspring that David might engender. David wasn't going to put it beyond the realm of possibilities that some references to illegitimate offspring were also included.

Also included in the one-sided discussion were the following items: that there was a foreign substance in the remainder of the soot that had been left behind that Gatsbacher hadn't yet deciphered, and that the soot and the explosion had behaved erratically.

David pounced onto the word that not only described the situation and the discovered items but his understanding as well: erratic. "What do you mean, erratic?"

Another few curse words poured forth. These had an oriental flavor to them, and David hoped that they didn't reference dietary habits. He chose to be grateful that he didn't understand them.

Gatsbacher moved into the focus of the discussion. "In a typical explosion, unless there is a force acting upon it, the detritus ought to have been scattered in perfect circles. I say 'circles' because, as you _ought_ to remember, Sinclair, there were two concentric circles."

"I remember," David told him, wishing the person in front of him would get to the point. _Aw, hell. What could it hurt?_ "Get to the point, Gatsbacher. I haven't got all day."

Yes, it did hurt. Gatsbacher treated Sinclair to a whole five minutes of vaguely-Swahili sounding verbiage, completely with tongue-clicking, where David didn't understand the words but understood the intent entirely too well. He waited it out.

"This detritus wasn't in a perfect circle, and neither can I decipher what the hell it's made out of," Gatsbacher finally informed him. "Look at it."

David looked at the stuff in the test tube. There was no other word to describe it: stuff. It was black. It looked slimy. It looked vile. It looked like vile _stuff_.

"You don't know what it is?"

"Would I have called you down here if I did?"

"I should hope so—"

"I would have sent you an email, fool."

Hah. This insult was in English, something that David could understand. Maybe Gatsbacher was running out of languages? David peered at the stuff in the test tube and ventured an opinion. "This doesn't look like soot from an explosion."

"Well, _duh_. I could've put that in an email, too."

"And you don't know what it is?" Despite the situation, David found himself getting morbidly intrigued by the _stuff_.

Clearly Gatsbacher appreciated David's newfound interest, because he/she/it swung into an impromptu lecture on the _stuff_. "It's an organic compound of some kind; there's a hell of a lot of carbon popping up on the mass spec. There's also some sulfur; here, smell."

"No, thanks." David backed away.

Too late. Gatsbacher shoved the test tube closer, and the _stuff_ proved to have an odor to match its appearance.

"Close it up, Gatsbacher! That stuff is as bad as an angry skunk!"

"That's just the sulfur compound," Gatsbacher told him, unperturbed by the aroma that now permeated the air in the forensics lab. "Now we get to the interesting junk in here. There's selenium, a hint of mercury—"

Then it happened. David blinked. Things stopped moving, and Gatsbacher's voice faded away.

* * *

"Sinclair! Sinclair!"

"What?" David blinked.

Gatsbacher snarled at him. "Wake up, Sinclair. This is not boring stuff, and this is not your high school chemistry class. Get your ass in gear. Pay attention."

"Right." David tried to get hold of himself. He shook his head, forcing the cobwebs to retreat. What the hell just happened? Had he fallen asleep in the middle of Gatsbacher's lecture? He didn't understand half or even three-quarters of the stuff that Gatsbacher was babbling, no doubt about that, but the last time David had fallen asleep in class was during that phenomenally boring lecture on macro-economics after he'd pulled an all-nighter finishing up a paper on the current state of Chinese-Taiwanese affairs, and that was more than ten years ago. "Sulfur. Rotten eggs smell."

"Catch up with me, Sinclair," Gatsbacher sneered. "We're talking air flow patterns now. Brownian motion."

David tried to take control of the conversation again. "You got a point to this, Gatsbacher?"

Gatsbacher licked his/her/its lips. "I need a physicist." The eyes narrowed with hunger. "I need Fleinhardt."

David froze. This was not good. What the hell was he going to do now? He put it in the form of a Rapid Action Deployment plan in his head: retreat or attack. Attack—refusing the request—meant giving Gatsbacher another opportunity to display proficiency in yet another language's scatological verbiage, tying one Special Agent Sinclair into literary knots while a human resources explosion took place that would require the intervention of someone well above David Sinclair's pay grade. Retreat meant having to explain to Megan Reeves why her significant other was nose to nose with Gatsbacher.

David had already survived Megan's wrath over a previous Gatsbacher-Fleinhardt liaison; he could survive another—he hoped. He took a deep breath, and pasted an entirely fake smile onto his face. "I'll call him."

"Good," Gatsbacher purred. He/she/it licked his/her/its lips once again. "I can't wait."

_Maybe I can get Charlie to be the chaperone_.

* * *

This was the sort of thing that always made him feel like a heel, but it had to be done and it had to be done now. Colby tried to be patient with the sobbing woman sitting across from him at her own kitchen table. _At least they didn't have any kids_, he rationalized, not trying to decide whether or not that was a good thing. _No kids left behind, but no kids to carry on this guy's legacy_.

"Never had an allergic reaction that you know of?" Colby would make this as fast as possible and then get out of this woman's grief. What had the victim died of? The medical examiner had characterized it as an allergic reaction gone haywire, an exposure to something so violent that it had closed up the victim's throat to the point where he couldn't breathe. The death had been fast and agonizing, yet not fast enough to end the suffering.

"Never." The eyes were red and swollen, but the tears had all been used up long ago. Her voice was nothing more than an exhausted whisper. "Jerry never had asthma as a child, didn't even have hay fever."

"Any illnesses at all, anything?" If he made this question and answer session thorough, then he wouldn't have to put either of them through this ever again; not the wife, and not Colby himself, either.

She tried to think. "He broke his wrist once, when he was sixteen. Hated doctors; said that it took too much time away from going hiking."

Hiking. Outdoors. Exposed to all nature of things, and likely not allergic to most, if not all, of it.

Dead end. Literally.

* * *

"You did what?"

It was downright frightening. Megan did not screech. She did not shout, nor did she shriek.

She simply dropped her voice to a very scary whisper. "Did I understand you correctly, Agent Sinclair? That, at Gatsbacher's request, you picked up the phone and invited Dr. Fleinhardt to visit Gatsbacher in that pit of hell known as Forensics?"

Too late, David recalled that Megan Reeves was an expert in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense martial arts that was part of what made the Mossad so scary—and so dangerous. He also recalled that David himself towered over Gatsbacher and out-weighed the forensics scientist by a good thirty or more pounds. To top it off, a little voice that sounded suspiciously like his grandmother from a couple of decades ago pulled a very cogent memory from his brain: Grandma Sinclair shaking her finger at him, chanting, "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you. And if I catch you again, David, I'll…"

David didn't remember what his grandmother had threatened him with or if he'd ever earned the punishment, but the day of reckoning had arrived in the form of Special Agent Reeves. He gulped. "Megan, I…" His voice trailed off as he desperately hunted for something to say.

"Yes?"

Caught red-handed. Guilty as charged. Not even eligible for a court-appointed attorney. David threw himself on the mercy of the court. "Megan, I'm really _really_ sorry. Gatsbacher sounded so desperate…"

"Gatsbacher _always_ sounds desperate." Megan wasn't letting him get off so easily.

David manned up. "Is there any way I can make it up to you, Megan? I'll take your next stake out shift."

"David, Larry was taking me out tonight."

_Oh, crap. Could it get any worse?_ David swallowed hard. _This would take something big_. "I'll volunteer to interrogate Fat Manny, next time we haul his ass in for questioning." And, at Megan's grimly thoughtful look, pushed to close the deal. "Next _two_ times, Megan. Two free rides."

Half way home, to judge by the consideration his fellow agent was giving the idea. Fat Manny, in addition to being an obese slob of a snitch, was noted for his flatulence that could knock down a bull in heat. David seized on his next best concept. "Let's go downstairs and see if we can pry Larry away from Gatsbacher," he offered.

Megan harrumphed. "We'd better."

Once again, David's grandmother came through, the manners that she'd whumped into his head coming into play: holding the door for the lady. Escorting her onto the elevator. David tried valiantly to haul his own ass out of the sling in the little time that he had before Megan saw Fleinhardt and Gatsbacher in action.

They heard the pair before they ever saw them.

"Fleinhardt, you ass! You wouldn't know a concentric circle if it came up and bit you on the butt!"

"Gatsbacher, that's no circle, you dimwit! Look at the radius! Varying, like your brain!"

"Less than three percent, _Fleinhardt!_"

"And right here it's _ten_ percent! That's enough to posit another hypothesis, _Gatsbacher!_ There was another force acting on the second explosion! To the Stygian depths of Hades with your Brownian motion! This is almost random!"

"Of course there was another force, _Fleinhardt!_ Why the hell else would I drag your ass down here? You think I like having you in my face?"

Megan exchanged a worried look with David. "They're at it," she murmured and, to David's consternation, added, "if there's blood, Sinclair, you're a dead man."

"I'm sure it's just a heated discussion." _Maybe if Don lets me have a back-dated transfer to Baghdad…_

They pushed through the door into the Forensics Lab.

It looked substantially as David remembered it: beakers with multi-colored liquids boiling gaseous vapors into collecting tubes. Banks of computerized equipment blinking lights at them in supposedly random patterns that probably spoke volumes to the initiated, a group to which David did not belong. Fluorescent overhead lighting was the extent of the technology that he professed to understand, and even then he would be hard-pressed to discuss why fluorescents were preferable to a good, old-fashioned sixty watt light bulb.

In the middle of the mess, nose to nose, stood Fleinhardt and Gatsbacher. David found himself almost automatically comparing the two: Gatsbacher had three inches over the physicist, both in height and in hair length, but Fleinhardt out-weighed the skinny Goth forensics specialist by some twenty to thirty pounds. Normally Fleinhardt's voice was the deeper of the two but now, at a high decibel level, that difference was out-classed by sheer volume: both were screeching at the top of their lungs. With four arms gesticulating, there was a real danger of something inflammatory and dangerous being upset and setting the Forensics lab on fire.

Larry did a better job of being aware of his surroundings. He pounced upon the two new entrants, who, he perceived, would take his side. "Megan! Tell this jackass that he's completely ignoring the effects of Brownian motion, which clearly dictate the drift of the carbonized elements—"

"I'm not ignoring them, _Fleinhardt!_ The effects are negligible, as anyone with three brain cells to rub together would easily figure out—"

"_You_ can't even calculate the area under the curve, _Gatsbacher_—"

"_You_ can't even _spell_ differential equations, _Fleinhardt_—"

Both were having entirely too good of a time. The glint in each one's eyes belied the shrieks that each was flinging at the other.

Larry was the first to recognize the need for reinforcements, and the pair who had just entered the Forensics lab didn't qualify. "I need Charles," he announced at the top of his lungs.

"What'sa matter, Fleinhardt? Not good enough to figure out a simple standard deviation?"

"I'm more than good enough, Gatsbacher. What I'm having difficulty with is teaching arithmetic to a dolt—Charles!" Larry beamed.

Both David and Megan turned around.

Charlie sauntered in through the door, Don behind him with a lop-sided grin that not only hoisted up one side of his face but curled up and over his ear.

"Three geniuses are better than one," Don announced diplomatically. "Anybody call for a mathematician?"

"Charles! Tell this oaf that—"

"Eppes! Talk to this moron! Tell him that—"

"Whoa, whoa, guys! One at a time." Charlie held up his hands in protest at the noise coming at him from too many directions. "The two of you sound worse than Amita's Combinatorics seminar for the graduate students."

"Perish the thought—"

"Gotta teach you some decent cuss words, _Eppes_—"

Charlie turned to Don and the other two. "Why don't you let us have a bit of time together, Don? We'll hammer out a hypothesis and bring it to you."

"Charlie?" As in: _are you sure that you're safe? I can get you some flak gear_.

"I've looked over the files," Charlie said firmly, ushering the three toward the door. "If I need anything, any data, I'll call your office." He grinned. "It's not as if we're conducting one of my freshman calc demonstrations. Much safer."

"Really?" Don couldn't help but notice all the glass bottles stacked on the shelves. All but two held warning labels.

"Much safer," Gatsbacher repeated with a satisfied glitter in one eye. "Get out, Eppes. We've got work to do." Gatsbacher shoved the door closed on the three field agents.

Words floated out from behind the Forensics door.

"Now, _Eppes_, tell this poor excuse for an astrological quack that—"

"Charles, would you _please_ explain to this high school drop out—"

Megan turned to Don, but her fierce look was directed at David. "You do realize, Don, that Larry was supposed to take me out tonight? I want him back in one piece!"


	3. Banks and Bombs

Colby slammed down the phone. "Don! Robbery in progress! It's another bank, and LAPD thinks that it might be the same bomb guys."

"Roll." Finally: a break! Don grabbed his jacket, trusting the fabric to cover the gun in his holster from scared civilian eyes, and dashed for the door. He beat the rest of his team by bare milliseconds, Colby directly behind him by dint of sheer muscle and bulk.

It took only moments to arrive, and they joined the LAPD black and whites outside of the East Burbank National Bank, a small financial institution that had early on decided that if it couldn't compete in size, it would make up for the lack in folksy charm. It was a single story brick building with an afterthought for a second floor, surrounded by precisely manicured bushes tended to by over-paid maintenance companies and their under-paid workers.

Neither Don nor any of his team nor any of the LAPD uniformed patrolmen cared that each blade of grass had been clipped to the same height. A more important consideration was that the mid-afternoon sun had burned away any dewdrops with the potential to cause an officer of the law to slip and fall onto that grass, and the irrigation spigots would hopefully not go into operation until four AM the following morning.

The large sign proclaiming the name of the bank that was carefully placed along the roadside had already had its glass shattered by one or more bullets, but the shards of glass didn't prevent some of LAPD's finest from taking shelter behind the remains. It was cover, and it was damn good cover, and they were glad to have it. Don scurried into position next to Lt. Walker, the officer in charge. "What's the word?"

Walker spared him a disgusted glare. "You made good time." He moved on to his recitation. "Somebody toe-tagged the silent alarm, and that's about all we know; that, and they're shooting at us. We know there's at least eight bank employees inside, and from what we can see maybe three or four customers. We've caught sight of three guys in black masks, all with guns."

"Three? You're sure?"

"Nope. There could be more in back, Eppes," Walker told him grimly. "They took out the cameras, first thing. We can't get any kind of feed from them."

This didn't have to be a bunch from the same string of crimes that Don's gut was insisting were connected and Charlie was still claiming had no pattern to hang his mathematical hat onto. Another bank job? Point: Don. Took out the cameras? Again: point to Don, although he was certain that Charlie could argue that it was standard practice for criminals of all persuasions to eliminate cameras and other surveillance devices in the middle of a stand-off.

Still, it was all pretty circumstantial, and so far Don couldn't see any additional details that might give his brother the patterns he was looking for. Don moved on to the big and overriding concern: bringing this slice of life to a safe and happy close. "They set off any bombs yet?"

Walker gave him a sour look. "You're makin' my day, Eppes."

Don pushed. "Seriously, Walker; anything that sounded like an explosion?"

Walker shook his head. "Not yet. You think it's gonna happen?"

"Let's just say that a little bird thinks it's a possibility," Don temporized.

"The news just keeps gettin' better and better," Walker grumbled. "Do we need the bomb squad?"

Not really. The bombs in the previous crimes hadn't been any bigger than smoke canisters. "Wouldn't hurt," Don told him. "So far, if these guys follow the rules, they'll set off a two level bomb, grab whatever they can, and skedaddle. Up to now, they've always fled the scene before any law enforcement could arrive." He frowned. "That makes this scene different. They haven't deliberately harmed anyone—preliminary cause of death on our one victim suggests that it was accidental—but they've never been in a situation where we've had 'em pinned."

"Think we can get the hostages out?"

"Good question. You getting a line inside?"

"We rang the phones a couple of times. Nothing."

"Let me try again," Don suggested. He reached for his cell.

"Nothing to lose but a lungful of air," Walker agreed, giving him the number.

One ring. Two. Don listened for a full two minutes before giving up. "Guess they're not feeling chatty."

"You got that right. What'd'ya want to do, FBI?"

"I _want_ to talk 'em out," Don growled, knowing that it wasn't going to happen. "Can we get a man inside?"

Walker snorted. "I wish. Give me a good SWAT team, and we'll take 'em out, pronto."

Don felt his way around the idea. "This many hostages, four or more suspects; it would be tricky. How many entrances?"

Walker had been through this before. "Yo, Buskey—bring the blueprints over here. Look at this, Eppes," he said, laying out the blueprints of the East Burbank commerce facility on top of the patrol car. The black hood to the engine was still warm and was likely to stay that way in the heat of the afternoon sun. Walker stabbed a finger onto the blueprints. "Main entrance, here. Back door over to the right, lets out onto a lot with nothing to it but dying weeds. Side entrance here, and another one here. That's where the employees go in and out."

"Any cover, any chance we could slide in?" Don pounced.

"Get real, Eppes. Parking lot. Wide open territory. They'll see you comin' before you're even thinking about goin' in that direction."

"Still…" Don wasn't ready to give up on the idea, all the more because nothing else was coming to mind. "We have eyes inside? Besides the cameras that they took out, I mean?"

Walker handed him a scope. "Closest we can get. Be my guest."

Don put the telescope to his eye, wishing that the criminals inside had been foolish enough to leave the cameras intact, or sensible enough to pick up the phone when he called. This bunch was milling around inside. There were three that he could see, just like Walker had said—no, there was a fourth, wearing a black mask just like the others. Don could see the hostages as well, all down on the floor with faces down. No blood, and that was the good thing. It didn't look like any had been shot. Don felt cautiously hopeful; maybe he could end this mess without anyone dying. It would be tricky, but it was goal worth aiming for. This wasn't a bunch that was ready to blow anyone away, and that meant that negotiation was still a possibility.

Maybe. From this distance, with this small 'scope, he couldn't really tell if the hostages were still alive. It was too far away to see if they were breathing. Everyone was down on the floor, not moving. None had that peculiar flop that screamed the 'I'm dead' look, but neither did Don see the occasional stray wriggle to ease a taut muscle. Even sleeping bodies twitched, and these didn't and the lack sent a few more butterflies into Don's gut to continue chopping a hole as he considered his lack of options. Were all the hostages dead?

He peered through the telescope, trying to get a clue as to who the perpetrators were. Number one, five foot ten, medium build, had a handgun in his left hand. That suggested a lefty, which eliminated some 70 to 90 percent of criminals, depending on which study Charlie happened to be quoting to him at the time. Big deal; that still gave Don more than a few thousand suspects.

Hey, did that ski mask look a little bulky? Yeah. Yeah, it did. Don squinted, wishing that he could dial a bit more clarity into the low power non-mechanized tube that was their only means of access into the interior of the bank. No help for it; Don needed better intel, and he needed a way inside.

He glanced over to the side lot. Just as Walker had said, it was a parking lot for the employees so that their cars would be out of the way and leaving room in the front for the paying customers. It was well-kept, with a neat row of yuccas sending long stalks skyward. The blooms were long gone, but the stalks remained to soften the outline of the brick wall that they were up against. A neat and swept sidewalk separated the parking lot from the employee entrance.

A glimmering of an idea crept into Don's brain. He didn't like it; it had too many chances for something really nasty to happen. Still…

"Side lot," he finally said. "Those cars; they belong to the employees?"

"Every one of 'em," Walker nodded. "You thinking that one of 'em might be a getaway car?"

"No." Walker had a point. One of those cars could have been connected, and the LAPD lieutenant had demonstrated once again why he was a lieutenant and not still walking a beat. "Not unless this was an inside job," Don continued. "Any reason to go with that?"

"Not yet, Eppes. Where're you going with this?"

"We need to get closer," Don grimaced.

Walker winced. "Yeah, been thinking about that. You think you see a way?"

"I'm thinking that with the right distraction, Granger and I can weave through those cars and slip inside that side entrance."

Walker snorted. "And I'm thinking that it's a good way to get somebody killed."

"Got a better idea?"

"We could wait 'em out."

"They're not interested in talking. They didn't pick up the phone," Don reminded him. "They've got a plan, and we don't."

"We got _your_ lousy plan, Eppes. I say, go for it. All we've got to lose is you and Granger. I can live with that." Walker's voice held a smirk, but the eyes were worried.

"Gee, thanks, Walker." Don moved his attention to the side lot, motioning Colby to join him. "Colby, I'm betting we can get in through the side door. What do you think?"

"I'm wondering if you're crazy, Don." But Colby immediately began to consider the possibilities, and, to Don's relief, came up with the same plan. "We sneak through the cars, so they can't see us. On our signal, Walker and his guys set up a distraction that brings those dudes to the front of the bank to see what's going down. You and I slip in through the side door. That door unlocked? We got a key?"

"No key," Walker told him. "You got a choice: break the window, or pick the lock."

"I think we can do a little better than that," Don said. "The bank's going to need a new door when we're done, but if we can prevent a few million from walking out I think they'll decide it was worth it."

"Not to mention that their customers will still be alive with accounts that earn crap interest," Colby added. "You ready to do this, Don?"

Don glanced at his watch; he'd never acquired the habit of using his cell to tell time. "Give us five minutes to get into position, Walker, and then give us a distraction. Nothing scary, not something that will cause them to think about sending out a hostage in a body bag, okay?"

"We'll keep it cool," Walker promised. "You keep your heads down, hear?"

The admonition rang in Don's ears as he and Colby trotted over to the far end of the side lot, far enough away so that the suspects inside couldn't see what they were doing. A crowd had gathered well behind the yellow police tape in front of the East Burbank National Bank, mostly comprised of reporters and news crews, but none were interested in views of the side of the building or of the pair of plain-clothes law enforcement officers making their way around. Don and Colby were able to slip through the dozen cars parked along the side until they were a few feet away from the employee entrance. Only the broad expanse of the sidewalk separated them from the building, an area that would make both FBI agents easy targets should one of the suspects happen to look in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Sinclair and Reeves kept themselves to the outskirts of the crowd, trying to watch their teammates yet prevent any hint of interest in the side door from appearing.

Colby put his mouth to Don's ears. "How much longer before Walker does his thing?"

"Should be any minute."

Don's word were almost cut off. A bull horn flared out, and both FBI agents recognized Walker's gravelly voice.

"You in there! You in the bank! LAPD! Come out with your hands up."

Right. Like that was going to happen, just like it hadn't happened the first two times that Walker tried the same stunt. Not the point. Don could see motion inside, could see three shadowy figures move toward the front of the bank to see what was going on outside. Where was number four? Already at the front? Yup, there he was, good ol' Lefty himself, dancing from one foot to the other, nerves shot. They were going to have to end this soon, before Lefty panicked and started putting holes in hostages.

Good. All four of them were craning around in front, to see what Walker had in mind. The hostages were still on the floor, none of them moving. No, wait—that one over there heaved a sigh. Good; that meant that at least one was alive, which further meant that they all likely were. Don could proceed as if they were. He scuttled over to the side wall beside the door of the bank, Colby flattened against the wall on the opposite side of the door. Step one completed: they were closer to the scene than anyone else in law enforcement.

Colby slipped a mirror up over the brick ledge so that he could see in through the window. "All up at the front, Don," he whispered, loud enough so that Don could hear him.

"Good. Watch 'em." Don slipped a diamond glass-cutter out of his pack. He etched a circle around the glass of the door, large enough for him to slip an arm through. The plan was simple: cut a hole in the glass, reach in and unlock the door from the inside. If Don could keep it quiet enough so as not to attract the attention of the suspects inside, they should be able to enter and take down all four before anybody knew what was happening.

Colby kept up his whispered report. "I see another customer; guy's on the ground half under one of the desks, which is why we couldn't see him at first. Only four suspects, all wearing masks. Gotta take a look at those masks when we pry them out of there, Don. Masks look pretty bulky. They're not just ski masks. I see that same explosion pattern on the floor, just like the previous jobs. It's got that two circle thing. It's part of the same group, Don. It must be the same gang."

"Yeah, well, Charlie doesn't think so," Don grunted, wondering why his brother was so wrong on something so obvious. He put the thought aside to concentrate on what he was doing. Time to shove it down his brother's throat would come later. Right now there were hostages to free and a few perps to take down. "Get ready."

Don carefully eased the circle of glass out of its nest, leaving a hole some six inches in diameter behind. He slipped his arm through and pressed on the silver bar that released the lock from the inside, blessing the fire regs that demanded that the inhabitants have a quick and easy egress in the event of fire. The lock _clicked_, and Don froze. Had anyone inside heard?

"Still up front, Don. Not paying attention to us."

Good. Don tugged gingerly on the door, pulling it open just far enough so that he and Colby would be able to slip through. Colby tucked the mirror away into his pocket, knowing that two eyeballs per agent would be enough for the task ahead. Don stepped onto the threshold, gun in hand, feeling Colby's hot breath on his neck, adrenalin pumping in readiness—

A quiet _puff!_ A small explosion. Black soot billowed around them. Don heard a startled exclamation from Colby…

…and everything faded away…

* * *

"He can't breathe!"

"Dammit, do something!"

"Out of my way," said a calm voice. "Roy, get me a number six ET tube, would you? You put in the epi."

Drowning. He was drowning. Don fought to take a breath, struggled to inhale. Someone grabbed his arms, pinned him down. Frantically, Don fought back, arms flailing, realizing that he wasn't under water but that he still couldn't breathe. What the hell was happening?

"He's going under," said the same calm voice. "I'll be able to tube him in a moment, as soon as he goes out."

"The epi's in," said someone else, equally as calm. "I'll send a twelve lead in to Base as soon as I can get a reading. His O2 sat's in the toilet, Johnnie."

"Doesn't surprise me. It's gonna be tough getting the tube in. His throat's pretty well closed up. You think we're gonna have to cut a trach?"

Dying, that was what it was. He was dying. Special Agent Don Eppes was dying. He couldn't breathe, and no air was getting into his lungs, and he was losing strength in his arms and legs and couldn't even fight back and there were still a hell of a lot of things that he wanted to do in his lifetime and _oh damn_ what would this do to his old man?

Someone forced his mouth open, and it didn't help. He still couldn't breathe. Something thick with a nasty taste slid along his tongue. He tried to cough and found that nothing worked. One of the calm voices seemed to expect it. "I can visualize the cords. Let's see if he pinks up."

…and everything faded away for the second time…

* * *

"What happened?" Don croaked.

He wanted to get back to work. He wanted to leap out of this hospital bed with its ultra-white linens, rip away the plastic mask that was delivering cool and nasty-smelling oxygen, and jump back into his clothes so that he could track down the perps who had put him here.

Not happening. Not only had his shirt been cut to shreds by the enthusiastic paramedics who had saved his life but he currently had about as much energy in him as a cell phone battery after six hours of steady usage by a Valley Girl. It was an effort to simply raise one arm, let alone contemplate what had gone down.

Megan looked at him sternly, covering her worry with annoyance. "You think you can remember what I'm telling you this time, Don? This will be the third time I've told you in the last hour alone."

"Oh." Don's face fell. "How…?"

"How long?" Alan Eppes correctly interpreted that question. He'd had practice the first two times. He leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair that he'd dragged to Don's bedside. "A mere six hours, Don. Six hours of fear that you wouldn't wake up, or that you'd suffered brain damage, or…" Alan's voice trailed off, and Don realized with dismay that this had been a bad one. That his old man had aged another decade in those six hours, and that describing the life of the family of an FBI agent—of _any_ law enforcement agent—as 'hard' was a gross understatement.

Don sighed. It was almost the only action he was capable of. "Sorry, Dad," he mumbled, knowing that it wasn't enough. That nothing would be enough, if anything permanent ever happened. _At least he'll have Charlie_, he thought to himself.

That brought to mind another concern. Don coughed, preparatory to another utterance. "Colby?"

"He's okay," Megan reassured him. "You were the only one to do a swan dive."

Don blinked. That didn't make sense. Colby had been right behind him. Any explosion that knocked Special Agent Don Eppes flat on his back should have at least bowled Special Agent Colby Granger over.

Either Megan had aced her recent course in mind-reading, or he'd asked this same question before. Probably the latter. Maybe not. Megan did pretty well in the mind-reading department, too.

"Nobody knows for certain. Best guess is that your body shielded him from most of the flying debris," Megan said. "You, on the other hand, got a face full of it, which is what landed you in here. The suspects rigged up a small bomb, triggered by anyone going through that entrance, just as the two of you did. We found another one at the back entrance, the door that we didn't try, and forensics is pulling it apart as we speak. It wasn't designed to cause damage, Don. It was another soot bomb, only this one wasn't the two-level type that we've been seeing. Yes, they did set off a two-level bomb in the center of the bank lobby. We've been questioning the hostages, and they all agree that the four men walked in, shot out the cameras first thing, and set off the two stage bomb."

"But…?" Whispering seemed to work better than his real voice. Don settled for that.

Megan frowned. "Just like the other cases, Don. Nobody can remember anything after that. The bomb goes off, and everyone seemingly goes to sleep. And, Don, here's the clincher: Colby did the same thing!"

"What?" It was hard to whisper, but even harder to get the word out. Of all the things to happen, that was the least likely. Colby Granger, before being accepted into the FBI, had been an Army Ranger, one of the toughest and hardiest soldiers around. Adrenalin had been pumping through the man's veins during the rescue attempt, something that would prevent him from sleeping for the next several hours, never mind that it was the middle of the day. Sleep? Colby? What had happened?

Megan had an answer for that, too. "We think that the suspects must have put something into the bomb," she told him. "There's a residue there, and forensics is working on it. They're trying to separate it from the explosive in the unused bomb, to see if they can identify it. It'll take a while, but once they identify the substance, we can take that as a lead to track this gang down. We're thinking that it might be some sort of anesthetic powder, and we're questioning hospitals and outpatient surgery centers to see if anyone is missing some. Identification of the substance is pending."

Don groaned. "Gatsbacher."

"Don't worry, Don," his father said to reassure him. "Both Charlie and Larry are giving your forensics people a hand."

Don froze. That was one thing that he remembered, and remembered clearly: Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, romantically linked with Special Agent Megan Reeves, had met up once again with that walking cesspool of a forensics specialist.

"Yes, Don," Megan hissed. Only Don could actually hear the venom encased in the words, and it was because he knew the score. The inference went over Alan's head. "Larry is working with _Gatsbacher_."

Don knew the phrase that followed, unvoiced but not uncommunicated: _David Sinclair is a dead man._


	4. Honk If You Passed PChem

"This is chemistry, oaf! If I'd wanted help from a chemist, I'd have asked for it!"

"Are you implying that I know nothing of chemistry, you imbecile? I'll have you know that during my undergraduate years, I minored in the subject and was recruited by all and sundry to pursue that topic instead of physics!"

"If you were all that smart, _Fleinhardt_, you would realize that the _sulfur _is bonding with the _oxygen_, not _nitrogen!"_

"Neither, _Gatsbacher!_ It's a _carbon_ structure! It's _organic!"_

Professor Charles Eppes turned his eyes to the heavens, mutely pleading for intercession or perhaps merely a set of expensive earplugs to muffle the din. "Honk if you passed P-chem," he murmured to himself.

The forensics scientist and the physicist were nose to nose, glaring at each other over a rack of bubbling test tubes. The substance, Charlie knew, had been painstakingly scraped up from the floor of the East Burbank National Bank, and portions of the scrapings were currently being subjected to various means of testing. One such was racing its way through the mass spectrometer, and all three of them anticipated that the substance would prove to be chemically identical to the soot found at the earlier bank job as well as the other cases that Don had pointed out to him.

More portions were demonstrating how they reacted to various solvents, before and after the application of energy in the form of heat. This was science that Charlie had had little exposure to; he had dutifully gone through the requisite chemistry courses during his undergraduate years and enjoyed the didactic portion of persuading the chemical equations to equalize, but the lab work with its smells and its tedious and mind-numbing cleaning of glassware had quickly reminded him that his place in the Greater Scheme of Things was first and foremost math.

There was a rack of four test tubes on Gatsbacher's lab bench, all containing the black soot and all appearing to have morphed into a dark sludge that would at any moment emerge and declare its intent to conquer the world through fear and loathing and whatever else dark sludge was wont to do. The bubbles that rose through each tube of sludge were thick, and made small and ominous popping noises, and Charlie sincerely hoped that the tops to each tube were securely fastened. It seemed to be the best way to keep the Powers of Evil in check.

The mass spec beeped at them, and Gatsbacher pounced onto the readout. "Aha! Identical! Look! There's the lithium trace!" As if Professor Fleinhardt's opinion had been that the soot from the previous bank job was a different concoction. "That proves the connection!" Aimed at Charlie himself, and that was another statement that Charlie couldn't fathom. Charlie hadn't objected to that line of reasoning at all; he simply wanted it supported by the evidence.

If the substances were identical—and there was no reason to think that the mass spectrometer was playing a massive and unfunny joke—then the link was growing stronger. However, the _pattern_ was missing, and on that Charlie stood firm and he said so. The crimes had very little linkage, only this bomb scenario, and because of that Charlie would not yet be able to help his brother and his team through statistical analysis. There was no way to predict where the criminals using this scenario would strike next, because the teams of criminals differed. Gatsbacher would have to produce something else in order to enlist Charlie's not inconsiderable talents.

"Hah!" Gatsbacher snarled again. "I suppose this means that I'll have to solve this thing myself, without your help, Eppes."

Charlie had been glared at by far more intimidating persons than Gatsbacher, although even he had to admit that few emitted the same quality of body odor. He had also picked up a few hints from his brother on how to handle the Fiend from Forensics.

"Sounds good to me," he said easily, picking up his case loaded with the unused laptop. "I've got an article waiting for me in my office. It's due in to the editor by the end of this week. I'll get to it. Let me know if you need me." He turned to go—and then it hit him. "You've got lithium."

"Well, _duh!_ What do you think those blinking lights are telling us?"

"That sounds as if you are onto something, Charles." Larry picked up on it. "What does lithium have to do with the problem at hand?"

"Lithium, several years ago, was well-known as a medicine for psychiatric illnesses," Charlie mused.

"Still is, Eppes. It's cheap and effective. If you're going to come up with something, get it right."

Charlie accepted the correction. "The point is, it affects the mind. We've been puzzling over some of the odder aspects of this series of crimes, that there is the two stage bomb that is followed by a period of confusion on the part of the bystanders. Nothing else seems to connect except for those items."

"And a murder victim. And we almost had another one, Eppes: your brother. Remember him?"

"Yes. Well…" Charlie swallowed hard. It had been a close one for Don. The sight of his brother, pale and limp on the emergency room stretcher, a tube thicker than a cigar shoved into his throat with scrub-coated personnel all shouting at each other, trying to get in to work on the slack body…Charlie shoved the memory away and gratefully plunged back into his numbers. "Lithium isn't a common element in explosives. The fact that we're finding it here seems significant."

"Not exactly, Charles," Larry jumped in. "Lithium, in fact, is highly flammable, and was used in the making of nuclear weapons. It's currently useful in the production of rocket fuels, although challenging to work with. If exposed to oxygen, it can react quite strongly and the resulting combustion can be difficult to subdue."

"He's got a point, Fleinhardt," Gatsbacher said thoughtfully, the obligatory cursing remarkably absent. Charlie chose to take that as a sign that Charlie had indeed hit upon something significant. "Nobody uses lithium as a bomb, these days. There's better stuff. So why is the mass spec telling us that lithium is in there?" Delivered in a growl, aimed at the suspect piece of machinery.

Larry too was lost in thought. "If the lithium is not part of the detonation device, then it follows that it must be contributing to the substance that the bomb was designed to distribute via air currents. And since we have observed a heretofore unexplainable mass confusion on the part of the bystanders to the aforementioned explosive device, I believe we can assume that the lithium is part of the substance that was intended for bystander consumption."

Gatsbacher spewed forth a string of words in something that sounded vaguely like French straight from the sewers, and Charlie took it to mean that Gatsbacher agreed with Larry.

Larry moved on. "Let us assume, for the moment, that the lithium is indeed essential to the process. We have determined that most if not all bystanders have been affected by this concoction, and have demonstrated erratic thought processes following inhalation. Let us enumerate the properties: one, it is stable at room temperature." He continued to tick off the points on his fingers. "Two, as a powder it is light enough to traverse the air so as to reach the designated population through the miracle of Brownian motion."

"Try using plain English, _Fleinhardt_. It turned their brains into mush and it floats."

Larry ignored the interruption. "Three: the powder is likewise stable enough to withstand the secondary explosion which sent it into the air. These properties alone should serve to reduce the number of possibilities."

"And it's organic, _Fleinhardt_. Don't forget that. That alone makes it almost impossible to figure out."

"Nonsense," Larry scoffed. "All we have to do is get a _competent_ chemist in here—"

Gatsbacher erupted in a torrent of verbal abuse that Charlie decided was either Russian or Ukrainian, and further decided that the difference wasn't worth commenting on.

Larry, having achieved the upper hand, moved on. "In the meantime, let us continue to explore the properties of this substance. We've measured many of its properties, its refractive index, its molecular weight, but we've neglected one of our most important senses: the olfactory organ."

"Larry?" Charlie thought he knew what was about to happen. He stood up in alarm.

Too late. Before either Charlie or Gatsbacher could stop him, Larry uncorked one of the test tubes and sniffed.

A peculiar look came over the physicist. "I know this scent…"

His voice trailed off, and Dr. Fleinhardt went still.

Nervously, Charlie tried to remain clinically detached. Breathing: normal, even a little slower than the peripatetic scientist's usual. Color, unchanged. Did Larry's pupils seem a bit dilated? Charlie wished that he had looked into more eyes, that he might be able to tell whether Larry's were normal or not. The muscles in his friend's arms were relaxed, and his legs were still supporting him. It was if Larry's soul had gone on vacation from his body.

"What an ass," was Gatsbacher's observation.

"…it seems familiar…" Larry was back.

"Larry?" Charlie took his mentor by the arm. "Are you all right?"

Larry blinked owlishly at him. "Of course, Charles. I am quite fine." He blinked again. "Why? Did something happen?"

"You were out like a 40-watt light bulb with the switch turned off, dimwit," Gatsbacher growled.

"I was not," Larry denied. "I was perfectly aware of my surroundings throughout the entire process."

"You'd better sit down, Larry," Charlie urged. "Gatsbacher is right; you went unresponsive for almost sixty seconds."

"From that small whiff? Ridiculous—"

"Yeah, you're ridiculous," Gatsbacher agreed. "What'd'ya find out? What'd it smell like?"

"Like…" Once again Larry trailed off, only this time it was for the purpose of thinking. "I know that scent. I have smelled something like it before."

"So, what was it, Fleinhardt?"

Larry frowned. "It will come to me."

"It better, after such a flat-assed stupid stunt—"

"We now have a two-pronged problem to work on," Larry mused, ignoring Gatsbacher's expostulations, much to the Fiend from Forensics's consternation. "We should devote some small amount time to discerning the origination of the detonation vehicle—and by 'we' I mean our friends upstairs—and then the majority of our efforts can be focused onto deciphering not only the effects but the exact chemical make-up of this substance. I will attempt to recall the circumstances under which I have previously smelled this substance, but the precise chemical make-up has yet to be determined. Think you can handle a simple chemical distillation, _Gatsbacher?"_ he sniped, unable to resist a parting jab.

"Hah! Fleinhardt, you wouldn't know a distillation if it reared up and bit you on the—"

Charlie quietly slipped out of the lab before the next generation of nuclear weapons was born.

* * *

Don relaxed on the sofa in his father's house—nope. It was Charlie's house now, not that Don was ever going to be able to remember that—and decided to simply be grateful that no one expected him to offer to get up and serve coffee. It was amazing how such a short period of not breathing could end up with such lethargy. It had been a close thing, Charlie had told him. His father still couldn't bear to say the words but every scared sideways glance that Alan Eppes threw toward his oldest son said more than any phrase.

No, the greatest effort that Don Eppes expected to put out today was to just be able to get up and go to the john, and even that was going to be limited to only when he really needed to go. Allowing his dad to wait on him hand and foot was okay—sort of. Don was a man of action, and after nearly twenty years of living on his own, allowing his father to take care of him just didn't _feel_ right. Don had already decided that tomorrow he would be ready to head back to the office, no matter what the department doc said.

That didn't mean that he wasn't keeping up with the case. No, this one had just become personal for Don Eppes, and for the rest of his team and for a substantial portion of the Los Angeles department. One of their own had nearly died, and the desire for payback in the form of a richly deserved prison sentence had just taken a sharp upturn. The word had gone out: the Feds were on the move, and anyone who didn't want to get trampled had better come up with some pretty good reasons as to why they weren't involved.

"We're not getting much out of forensics, Don," David told him. The team had made a late afternoon visit to check on their boss. David had seated himself in the arm chair facing Don, and Megan and Colby had pulled over chairs from the dining room. "Not yet. Not that Gatsbacher hasn't been cracking the whip over Charlie and Larry. All Gatsbacher keeps saying is that there's lithium in the compound, and a bunch of organic whatever. They're trying to figure out where the bomb components came from, but so far things look pretty mundane. Any backyard kid with access to the Internet could figure out how to put these together."

"Yeah, but this is a two-part detonation," Don argued. "That means that someone has to be thinking about it, what it means and how to get it to work. This has to be someone with a little bit of knowledge."

"All right, so that cuts out half the backyard kids," Colby allowed. "It still doesn't point us in any particular direction, Don."

"What about Charlie? Hasn't he come up with anything yet?"

Megan stepped up. "Charlie keeps saying that there isn't any pattern that he can work out. We have the common link of the two stage detonation, but both the locations of the crimes as well as the groups involved appear completely random."

Don sighed, and imagined that he could feel each individual molecule of oxygen seeping into his bloodstream. "What's the word on the street?"

"Complete and utter confusion," David told him. "Nobody knows where this is coming from. Nobody's getting recruited, none of the criminal ordinance people are being consulted." He grinned, and it wasn't a happy grin. "Even the locals are getting cranky. We're hassling them, and they aren't involved. They're not making a dime off of this. They want this thing stopped as much as we do."

"Good," Don grunted, and set off a spate of coughing. "Thanks," he gasped, sipping at the glass of water that Megan pushed at him. "Damn stuff. There ought to be a clue in it somewhere. What's taking Gatsbacher so long? Two genius-level experts aren't enough help?"

"Yes, David." No question about it; there was almost a hiss of anger in Megan's voice. "Two genius-level experts aren't getting the job done? Why did we request that Charlie and Larry help Gatsbacher? It doesn't seem to be working."

_Okay, can't let things get out of hand_. Don coughed again, and let the reflex break up the impending fight within his team. Cool water dribbled down his throat, soothing the hot fire.

It hit him. Patterns; that was what Charlie was always talking about. That was what math described. It wasn't that there weren't any patterns in the crimes. It was that they hadn't figured out what would be _enough_ of a pattern to make the math worthwhile.

Don had just figured out a pattern that they hadn't yet looked at. He grinned at his team. "Somebody get Charlie."

"Don?" Colby perked his ears up, as did the rest.

"We've been trying to figure out a pattern of how they do this," Don told them, "and we've been thrown off by the different numbers of suspects in each crime. But what if it's the same people, over and over, but not everyone participates each time? Have we checked out the people involved?"

"They always wear masks…" Colby's voice trailed off.

"Right." David picked up on it. "They wear masks, but they can't quite disguise their body size and shape."

"Camera shots." Megan leaped on the thought. "We don't have much footage from each crime, but we do have a couple of frames before the suspects shoot out the cameras."

"Exactly," Don nodded. "We can compare the frames that we have in each scenario to each other. We can see if we're dealing with one group, or many." He eased himself back against the sofa, satisfied with his efforts. "Let's see if we can give Charlie his pattern."

* * *

Charlie grinned. "I can do this." He tapped several keys on his laptop, bringing up the first frame of the East Burbank Community Bank robbery. It showed two men in black masks entering through the main entrance, glass doors swinging, with a third man barely visible behind them. Charlie placed target dots at the top of each head, at the shoulders, around the waist and finished up by placing two more dots at each foot. "I'll take composite readings from each frame," he informed Don, "and come up with a reasonable approximation of each one." He glanced at the tiny time indicator at the bottom of the computer screen with a grimace. "It'll take a while," he sighed. "I've got exams to grade, and they're due back to the students at 10 a.m. tomorrow. This is exacting work," he explained before Don could jump in with any kind of reason why Charlie should pull yet another all-nighter on the FBI chore. "A big piece of this is done by hand, placing the target points on the different spots. Any error gets magnified, which is why it need to be done with a clear head, not one hyped up on caffeine in the middle of the night."

Don slumped back in the chair in Charlie's office, the one that just moments before had held a stack of un-graded papers. That stack looked big, he recalled, refusing to look at it again where it towered on the floor. The top was nearly up to the seat level. "Can't any of your grad students help out? Extra credit, or something?"

"Bailed." Charlie spoke around a pencil in his mouth, peering at the screen. "Something about a sick father back home. Not about to take 'no' for an answer, so it's for real, not that I'd think otherwise. He'd rather do math than go home." He grunted. "This figure, here—no, this one—looks pretty small. A woman?"

Don got up from his chair to look over his brother's shoulder, refusing to acknowledge the initial dizziness that accompanied the move and the wheeze that followed. "Maybe. Or a man who's pretty small. Five foot six, maybe? Can you zoom in, see if there's an Adam's apple on his throat?"

Charlie sniffed. "Not on this set up. This is my laptop, Don, not your fancy digitals at the office. You want to move this project over to them?" he offered innocently. "I'll show 'em what I need, let _them_ stay up all night—"

"That's okay," Don said hastily, knowing that if he tried to get the FBI tech wizards to help that he'd be waiting for another two weeks for an answer. As much as he despised working with Gatsbacher, at least the forensics geek was fast. "Tomorrow will be just fine."

Charlie craned his head around to look at his big brother. "And sit down, Don! You still look like crap. Are you supposed to be working? I thought the docs gave you desk duty."

"This is desk duty," Don pointed out, trying to be reasonable. It helped that the cough that was lingering in his throat was able to be successfully stifled. "I'm sitting in front of _your_ desk. And I'm fine."

Charlie sniffed again, making it clear what he thought of Don's logic, and moved on. "Gatsbacher come up with anything yet? The chemical analysis?"

"Nope." Don shook his head. "It's complex, is the only thing that's coming out. Organic, or something. Whatever that means. Said it may be some sort of plant compound, something created by boiling a bunch of leaves together, which makes it a bitch to decipher. Gatsbacher started cursing at that point, so I left. How about Larry?"

"Good question. Haven't seen him all morning." Charlie placed another target dot onto the frame and hit the enter key. "How many frames do you have? About fifteen per robbery, of which there are now four, making it some sixty frames with a minimum of three suspects to enter the data points onto—"

"Larry?" Don interrupted the complaint.

"Larry thinks he remembers the smell." Charlie's attention was still caught by the computer data. It was clearly more interesting to him than discussing the case with his brother. "He's trying to figure out where he remembers it from."

"Yeah? How's he doing that?"

"Good question. He was muttering something about hypnosis, then regression analysis—"

"That's memory regression, Charles," a new voice butted in. The body followed, carefully closing the office door behind him. "Good afternoon, Don. You look far better than when I last saw you. I trust your health is much improved?"

"Hey, Larry." Don waved at the physicist. "Just talking about you. Remember anything about the smell?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Larry, knowledgeable in the ways of mathematical geniuses, carefully placed another stack of papers, journals this time, onto the forgiving floor in order to free up another seat. Charlie didn't offer any objections, and didn't even notice as he maneuvered the computer mouse over the appropriate juncture on the screen. Larry settled himself onto the chair, a hand going automatically to his chin. "You may or may not be aware, Don, that the monks that I spent time with are experts when it comes to matters of the mind in harmony with the body. All things are inter-related, all memories—"

"Yes, yes," Don interrupted. Larry too could go on forever, and Don didn't have the time or the energy to put up with it. "What did you remember?"

Larry wasn't about to be rushed. "I initially sought them out, hoping that they could use some of their regression techniques—hence, the reference to regression analysis, which, statistically speaking, has nothing to do with the memory regression techniques used by the monks—"

"Larry!"

"—when it hit me." Larry beamed at them.

"_What_ hit you?" It was going to be _Don_ hitting _Larry_, if the man didn't come up with his answer.

"I have recalled the scent of the unknown substance, Don."

"What is it?" The answer had better come out in under fifteen seconds, or Don would be charging Larry with obstruction of justice. He gritted his teeth.

"The monastery."

"They got it at the monastery? The monks are committing the crime?" This was getting wilder and wilder. "They're giving or selling that damn dust to the criminals? Tell me they didn't realize what they were doing!"

"No; heavens, no, Don!" Larry was amused by the FBI team leader's lack of comprehension. "No, the substance in question recalled to mind similar concoctions that the monks have used as an aid to memory. I started out intending to visit them, to perform a memory regression. As you can tell, I was successful in my quest."

"The monks make it." Don was trying hard to follow Larry's line of reasoning.

"Actually, no, they don't," Larry contradicted. "I pursued that thought, and the monks were kind enough to assist me in my query. We explored some several hundred of their elixirs, without success. The odor that is associated with the detonation device, Don, is not one that is familiar to the monks."

"But you said that you identified it," Charlie pushed.

"I did," Larry confirmed. "The monks do not distill the substance, but they are _familiar_ with it. Once I described the effects of the odor on the brain, that the person exposed to the scent essentially _stops_, they were able to assist me in the identification."

"Well?" Don demanded, handing the straight line off to Larry.

Larry beamed. "Don, you are an expert in criminalistics. Have you ever heard of the Thuggee cult, of India?"

"Of course." It was standard course work at Quantico. "It's where the word 'thug' comes from. They were supposed to worship Kali, were famous for hijacking caravans across India. Liked to garrote people, if I recall. They were pretty much wiped out during the British occupation." Don cocked his head. "Are you telling me that we have a cult of Thuggee here in Los Angeles?"

Larry shook his head. "No, not in the slightest. In fact, there is no hard evidence that the cult survived the British efforts, the Indiana Jones movie not withstanding."

"Good." Dealing with a long gone murderous cult wasn't something that Don looked forward to.

"There was, however, a small off-shoot of the cult known as the Deshwanee."

"Huh?"

Larry remained oblivious to Don's obvious dismay. "The monks know little about this cult, save that, like the Thuggee, its followers worship Kali—and that they have a strong tradition of using various herbs compounded into powders and potions. One legend has it that the cult diverged in order to study the healing arts, yet another insists that its members use supernatural skills in order to obtain whatever item they desire. I believe the monks mentioned a rather large ruby that belonged to a long dead ruler. It hasn't been seen since the early nineteenth century, and is believed to be still with the Deshwanee." He leaned back in his chair. "The potion, and it is indeed described as a powder, that produces the effect that we have seen is associated with the Deshwanee cult traditions."

"And this is the bunch that is knocking over banks and jewelry stores in Los Angeles? This, this Deshwanee thing?"

Larry waggled his finger. "That, Special Agent Eppes, is for you to discover. My part is complete; I have identified the substance used in the secondary detonation device. And I accomplished it before that twit Gatsbacher, I might add," he sniffed, unable to subdue the smirk that played around his lips. "You might let that get around. Subtly, of course," he added.

"Of course." Don was already lost in thought.

There were gangs, organized crime mobs, and terrorists, all walking the streets of L.A. in freedom with the FBI just waiting for the mistake to be made that would allow the feds to take them down, but this? Who would ever believe that a long-dead cult of Kali-worshippers had emerged in the City of Angels?

* * *

David began to tick off the possibilities on his fingers. "We know that someone, somewhere, is making this two stage bomb. That's a given."

"Which means that they're getting the stuff to make them from somewhere," Colby chimed in, joining the impromptu updating of the case. "Not heisting it from the military, that's for sure. There'd be trace additives that we've looked for and haven't found. Not the military," he repeated, leaning back so far in his chair that it looked to be in serious jeopardy of turning over.

Megan agreed. She perched on the edge of Colby's desk. "Even the companies that use gunpowder, ammunition makers and firecrackers; none anywhere in the area have reported any losses. So where does that leave us?"

David had the answer. "With someone who knows how to make it themselves, which then suggests someone with a chemistry or physics background."

"Basically, someone who knows enough not to blow themselves up," Colby added grimly. "That means two categories: scientists, and ex-military ordinance types."

"Sure, but how many of those are likely to be members of this cult that Larry came up with?" David wanted to know. "What was it called again? Deshwanee? Anybody know anything about it?"

Megan shrugged. "Not me, and that's _after_ I had a long talk with Larry. Apparently nobody knows much about them." She gave a bright false smile. "Look at that. We'll be able to say that we're the first in FBI history to arrest members of this cult."

"I could do without the honor," was David's take on it, "and that's assuming that they really do exist, not to mention a little thing called proof of guilt. Let's head back toward the explosive stuff. I don't care how mysterious this cult is, they have to be creating the bombs from something other than sunflower seeds, which means that they're getting the ingredients from somewhere."

Now they were moving into Colby's area. "Simple incendiary, with a fuse. I could make a better bomb from stuff in my kitchen. What makes it interesting is the double explosion approach. That says that we've got a semi-protected shell inside the first. Neither bomb is designed to maim and kill; nobody's yet been seriously injured from the explosions. A few cuts and bruises, but these guys aren't going out of their way to harm anyone."

"Great. A mysterious cult of Kali-worshippers with a conscience."

Colby ignored her. "So we look for sources of the ingredients for the combustibles, like I said. Somebody who knows how to make it. They make the incendiary, they use something for a fuse—even a piece of string will do, soaked in gasoline—and then they make some sort of container for it. Two containers, actually. One inside the other." He snapped his fingers. "Teachers."

"Teachers?"

"Chemistry and physics teachers," Colby explained. "Think about it. You want to draw your students in, so you come up with some experiments that go 'boom'. Charlie does it all the time. Titanium tetrachloride is one of the easiest things to work with; pretty good with smoke bombs, which is what these essentially are. You stick your unknown substance that Larry was talking about inside the inner one. Two poofs later, you got a bunch of people inhaling your substance-laced smoke and taking a nap." He waved his hand at the dark computer screen. "All we got to do is figure out how many people in this area order titanium tetrachloride."

Megan looked doubtful. "It can't be all that many people. I hope," she added darkly. She sniffed. "I'll bet that even Charlie orders that—what did you call it?—titanium whatever. He _likes_ to make things explode."

Colby grinned. "There's our answer. Our consultant, mild-mannered Professor Charles Eppes by day and by night is secretly a member of a mysterious Middle Eastern cult devoted to the…" he trailed off. "What are they devoted to?"

"Making money the illegal way," David informed him dryly. He jerked his thumb in the vague direction of the exit. "Get to work. We've got some titanium tetrachloride to track down."


	5. Knowing Where to Look

Charlie leaned back in his chair, contemplating the screen of his laptop. A small blue light was on almost steadily at one corner of the keyboard, indicating that the guts of the thing were working non-stop to solve the problem that he had set up. It had been a pretty piece of work; he'd laboriously placed the target points on each of the suspects in each of the digital camera frames that he'd been presented, and the computer was now attempting to estimate the size of each suspect preparatory to doing some matching between the frames. The goal, Charlie knew, was to decipher the make up of the groups that were perpetrating the crimes. Were they the same people, over and over, with one or another sitting out? If it was a large enough group, that would be a good way to throw the authorities off track.

Patterns. That was the key: patterns. People fell into patterns without realizing it, and in that concept lay the beauty of mathematics. Math could decipher those patterns, and could predict the future based on what had happened in the past. There was always a degree of uncertainty, always the possibility of beginning a new pattern, but that never detracted from the elegance of numbers.

Take the current example. There were a number of constants: the target would have a large amount of currency on hand that the thieves could seize. Each was a publicly accessible facility with a constant flow of customers, and because of that each possessed potential hostages in the event that someone was able to trigger an alarm. In the first two places, Charlie knew from reading the files, the suspects were able to get in and out with the money before any of the law enforcement groups could be alerted, and that brought Charlie to the third constant: the use of the two stage bomb that delivered a powder that clouded the minds of the bystanders.

'Clouded the minds'? Charlie snorted to himself. This was beginning to sound like a comic strip. It did, however, limit the types of places that the thieves could strike: each target needed to be an enclosed building, preferably one room, where the dust would attack every person there. If that didn't happen, the unaffected bystanders would call for help, which was what happened at the last bank robbery.

He pulled himself back to the problem. He'd been distracted by the apparent lack of a pattern, by the different numbers of suspects in each crime. He'd originally thought that it was several different groups using the same modus operandi, with only the two stage bomb as a common factor.

He grimaced, wanting to forgive himself for the error. It was Don who had come up with the current approach, Special Agent Don Eppes who'd suggested that it was the same gang, simply using different amounts of people to perpetrate the crimes. Charlie glanced at the screen of the laptop, mentally estimating how long it would take the machine to complete its work. He wouldn't make that mistake again, thinking that the relationship was merely tangential. This was getting personal. It had been _Don_ who had nearly paid the ultimate price.

Charlie shook himself. Worrying about had nearly happened was nonproductive, and he needed to solve this puzzle. He idly wondered if Larry and the Fiend from Forensics—he chuckled, finding himself automatically using Don's name for the geek—had come up with anything concrete. Not that it mattered; that was the field agents' part of the problem. The chemical make-up of the substance would be a clue to be tracked, not necessarily part of the mathematical equation that Charlie was working on. Charlie eyed the screen again, and estimated that the computer would be working for at least another couple of hours.

Two hours, with nothing to do but grade more exams. Not fun. Not even remotely enjoyable. Charlie consulted the time keeper in the bottom of the screen and decided that he really did have enough time to spare to look into another lead that had occurred to him.

Indian cults; Thuggee, and this Deshwanee thing. The key was research, and the key to the key was knowing where to look.

A computer search was out. If it was that easy, Don and his team would have already done it. Besides, Charlie's computer was otherwise occupied. No, he needed a different search pattern, something that he would think of and the others wouldn't.

Charlie, however, had better sources of material. He worked at a world-class educational institution, with world-class minds, and with world-class insight into problems. He picked up the phone to find the location of one of those minds. "Hello? This is Charlie Eppes. Listen, can you give me the extension of Professor Indira Ramghava?"

* * *

"They always run," David grumbled, wishing that he'd worn his other jacket, the one that had already seen the dry cleaners too many times, the one that he wouldn't care if it got torn and mended yet again. No, it had to be the _good _one, the one that he was intending to wear to the social next Saturday night, trolling for someone who might, just might, be _The One_. "Colby!" he yelled. "Hit the back!"

There was a yodel from off in the distance that suggested that his partner had heard the anguished shout and was more than happy to pitch in.

This was too easy: Jonathan Martin, of 2121 Folker Ave, Apartment 3H, currently working and fleeing from his job at the big name hardware store that was busily engaged in putting the smaller mom and pop shops out of business. Jonathan, upon discovering that the FBI wished to speak with him, declined the invitation with precipitous haste, dashing out through the plumbing supplies, taking a sharp detour through houseplants and leaping over the display fishpond with three surviving goldfish, and finally out through the branch-clipping tools—

—and came face to face with Special Agent Granger.

Jonathan Martin wasn't completely without intelligence, although both FBI agents had their doubts. To defend himself, Jonathan snatched up the nearest tool at hand. It happened to be a hedge clipper—with long and sharp blades.

Two handguns, in the capable hands of Special Agents Sinclair and Granger, snapped into position. David was uncomfortably aware of the movement of the rest of the employees in their direction, all eager—for what? To see one of their own placed in handcuffs? To take a cell phone video, hoping for something untoward that they could then sell to local and national media outlets? David resolved to handle this without the potential for ending up as the headliner for the evening news. _FBI Shoots Man Trimming Hedge—Details at Eleven_.

"Don't be stupid, Martin," he warned, keeping a sensible distance from the sharp-edged clippers. Martin looked as though he was ready to charge, screaming and hollering. "All we want to do is talk. We're not after you." _Although we will be taking your ass downtown for assault on a couple of federal agents. Let's not remind you of that._

"Get back! Get back!" Martin tried to keep both agents in sight. The hedge-clippers waved wildly.

Colby eased himself farther to one side, forcing Martin to turn his head to cover them both. Get far enough away, David knew, from the onlookers and one of them could dart in and grab the dangerous clippers. The situation would be defused without gunfire. Colby pulled Martin's attention to himself. "Look, man. We're not looking for trouble. Put the clippers down, and we'll just talk, okay?"

"I didn't do nothing!"

"We know that," David soothed. Martin's head whipped around to face him. "All we want is to talk. We want information." He stepped to one side, making it look as though he was backing off. "See? We can end this without anyone getting hurt." He came out of his stance, letting the barrel of his handgun dangle toward the concrete floor. "Just put the clippers down, Mr. Martin, and let's both walk away without getting hurt, okay?"

The crowd was growing, and Martin didn't see any one of them. David could hear the _click click_ of the cell phones taking in every detail of the stand-off.

He didn't have the luxury of dealing with the crowd. As long as everyone stayed out of the line of fire, he would have to be satisfied. No, David corrected himself; he also wanted this to end without Jonathan Martin taking two or more rounds straight to the heart, because that was what was going to happen if the kid didn't wise up fast.

They needed to end this soon, before someone did something stupid. David took control. "See? I'm putting my gun away, Mr. Martin." David ostentatiously replaced the handgun into his leather shoulder holster. The gun was still loose and could be pulled back out in a split instant, but that wasn't the point. The point was that David was lowering the stakes, and keeping Martin's attention riveted on him. "We can work this out, Mr. Martin. All we want to do is talk."

"I didn't do nothing!"

"We know that," David lied again. _If you didn't do anything, why'd you panic?_ "We're after someone else, and we need your help to get him." _True. You're not acting like any of the criminals that we're after. They were calm, cool, and collected as they shot out the bank video cameras. _David spread out open hands_._ "We just need to talk, to find out what you know."

"I didn't do nothing." The ends of the clippers dipped. Martin was getting tired, and the adrenaline was leaving.

_Keep it together, Colby!_ David didn't dare look at his partner. He couldn't take one iota of attention away from Martin. This was the tricky part: if he could just get Martin to put down the clippers before Colby darted in and wrestled him to the floor… "I know that, Mr. Martin." Keep it personal. Establish the one-on-one connection. "Let's end this; let's walk away together. You help us, and we'll help you. Win-win situation."

"I…" Martin looked around, eyes glazed, seeming to see his fellow employees for the first time. "I…"

"Just put the clippers onto the floor, Mr. Martin," David urged. "Let's walk away."

The clippers drooped further, the tips almost touching the floor. David chanced a step in, and Martin didn't react. Behind the suspect, David could see Colby still in position, hands locked around his handgun, ready to fire at the slightest provocation. David edged forward another half step. "We're both tired of this, Mr. Martin. Put the clippers onto the floor." He held his breath.

Martin sighed, and the clippers slipped from his fingers to clatter onto the concrete floor. Colby darted in from behind, kicking the dangerous tool away from where Martin could get it, grabbing the suspect's wrists and twisting them behind. The handcuffs went on in a trice.

David turned to the crowd of employees. "Show's over, folks," he told them.

The crowd dispersed slowly, turning around to look back in case something newsworthy occurred before they left. Colby took the suspect in hand, pushing him toward the back exit to avoid any interference by customers or any of the employees. Martin seemed completely subdued, head down and cowed. There was no fight left in the man.

David eyed the suspect, trailing after them. What did the man know? Why had he fought back?

* * *

Professor Indira Ramghava was a tiny slip of a woman. Her skin was dark toned, and there her resemblance to Amita ended. Though both had their origins on the Indian sub-continent, they looked nothing alike, Charlie decided. Amita was a Malibu beauty, and this woman was clearly old school. Her clothes demonstrated her heritage, the vibrant colors gracefully draped around her slender frame. Older, too; streaks of gray suggested that all the black hair would be gone in another few years.

She greeted him with a smile. "Professor Eppes, what can I do for you?"

"Call me Charlie," Charlie requested. "I'm consulting for the FBI, and a lead has come up that I'm hoping you can help me with."

"The FBI? That sounds serious."

Charlie nodded, taking in the intricate décor of her office. There were cleverly carved elephants, and richly stitched cloth wall hangings, several with sayings in a language that he couldn't read. "This part of it may or may not be. Typically I do various types of statistical analyses that assist the field agents to locate the suspects; for example, right now I'm helping to ascertain the physical make-up of the group that's committing the crimes. That's not why I'm here," he said, pulling his attention back to his hostess. "I'm looking for information on an ancient cult called the Deshwanee. Have you ever heard of it?"

Dr. Ramghava cocked her head. "It's not well known, and rather thought to be entirely fictional. What is your interest, Dr. Eppes? Charlie?" she corrected herself.

"We've come across a substance that was reputed to be used by them," Charlie told her, "but we're having trouble deciphering what it's made of. Added to that, we know nothing of this cult and so we don't have many ideas where to look for clues. This is a fishing expedition," Charlie admitted. "I knew that you taught here at CalSci, and I took a chance that you might know something."

"Hm." Dr. Ramghava thought, closing her eyes momentarily. She opened them to gaze at her visitor. "The cult isn't so ancient, not as Indian history goes. We have a rich culture, Dr. Eppes, and one that goes back for many thousands of years. The Deshwanee were an offshoot of the Thuggee—you've heard of them, yes?—an offshoot that was a direct result of the British invasion and occupation of India. The British chose to wipe out the Thuggee cult, and a small group broke off in an attempt to maintain the old traditions. They were mostly healers and their abilities—if true, and we have no proof of that—were astounding even in the light of what modern Western medicine can do."

"The Thuggee were known for attacking trade caravans that crossed India," Charlie said. "From what I understand, they would join the caravan by twos and threes, in order to avoid suspicion. At the proper time, when enough had joined, they would overpower the remainder of the caravan and steal the goods."

"You _have_ been studying, Dr. Eppes," Dr. Ramghava approved. "The Deshwanee, however, did not engage in that sort of behavior. They were entirely benevolent, devoting their lives to the study of herbs and medicines, which is why they broke off from the Thuggee. Ted," she called out to a man walking past the door to her office. "Come in here, would you? Ted Belkins, one of my graduate students," she introduced the young man. "Ted, this is Professor Eppes. He has some questions about the Deshwanee," she explained and, turning back to Charlie, added, "the Deshwanee are part of Ted's doctoral research. He should be able to provide you with a lot of data." She smiled in dismissal. "I'll leave you two to go at it. I apologize, Dr. Eppes—Charlie—but I'm expected elsewhere."

"That's fine," Charlie told her. "You've been very helpful. I'm sure Ted will be of great use. My office?" he offered.

"My pleasure, Dr. Eppes."

"Charlie," Charlie offered, sticking out his hand. "Let's walk."

Ted was clearly not of Indian origin; no one with that shade of white blond hair and blue eyes would ever be taken for a member of a culture that had grown up in the hotter climes. Almost a surfer dude, Charlie thought, except that surfer types tended to build pecs, and this graduate student hadn't bothered. Not out of shape, no, but also this was someone whose pursuits were academic rigor rather than the perfect wave. Ted was a couple of inches taller than Charlie himself which still put the grad student at the low end of the height chart, just like Charlie. Jeans and a tee completed the outfit, the tee too faded to tell what the original decoration on the front was. Probably something irreverent, if Charlie knew his grad students.

The sun outside felt good, and the air sweet with the scent of the gardenias planted along the edges of the walking path. Charlie didn't waste any time. "Tell me about the Deshwanee."

"It was an interesting side note of history," Ted told him. "Like the Thuggee, they worshipped Kali." He paused. "How much do you know about Kali, Dr. Eppes?"

Charlie shrugged. "Indian goddess of death, pretty much sums it up."

Ted nodded. "That's what most people think, but the actuality is much more extensive. There isn't time for the whole lecture, so I'll just condense it down to the concept of death as a part of life. Kali is also considered an important figure of wholeness, and healing, which is the basis for the offshoot of the Thuggee known as the Deshwanee. They embraced the healing aspect of Kali, and focused their efforts on health and medicine, such as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

That led into Charlie's next question. "Did they do much with creating potions and elixirs, stuff like that?"

"The mythology says they were pretty good at it," Ted admitted. "Of course, we'll never know for certain. There are some studies, original work from the 1930s, that were unable to find concrete evidence about the Deshwanee."

"Then we don't know if this cult actually existed."

"That's right," Ted nodded. "There's a whole school of thought that says that some Kali worshippers developed the story of the Deshwanee in an attempt to win local support for the practitioners, and the story took on a life of its own. Some of the local tales of their exploits are just what you'd expect: raising the dead, performing successful major abdominal surgery and caesarian sections without benefit of anesthesia or antibiotics, that sort of thing. Wishful thinking, for the most part."

"So the Deshwanee weren't associated with thievery or murder," Charlie mused.

"I didn't say that," Ted warned. "There were a bunch of other stories about the Deshwanee potions being used for less benevolent purposes; killing off a rival suitor through the use of poison, for example. Another tale talks about a son murdering his father in order to become the leader of the town. Apparently the Deshwanee could be bought and sold, just like any one else." He cocked his head. "Remember, though; this is only speculation. No one from the scientific community has ever produced a living, breathing practitioner of Deshwanee." He grinned. "If you come across one, let me know. It'll make my name a household word among scholars of Indian history. I'll be as famous as you, Dr. Eppes!"

"Call me Charlie," Charlie muttered, reddening. He pushed past that line. "Thanks for your assistance, Ted. I'll make sure that the FBI knows how helpful you've been." He sighed. "Back to the computer drawings." It sounded like the Deshwanee lead had died out a couple of centuries ago.

Dead end.

* * *

No, it wasn't desk work but it wasn't quite field work, either. After a day behind his desk, catching up on his paperwork and listening to his team describe their activities in the Bright Outdoors, Don was ready to do more than cough up a lung. And, he rationalized, he wasn't coughing as much. Whatever crap had gotten into his windpipe and nearly choked the living daylights out of him was gone. Don had a new appreciation for what the murder victim had suffered, for he'd nearly met the same fate.

He put that thought behind him. It wasn't useful, thinking about how there might have been two murder victims associated with this case instead of just the one. Whatever that crap was in the bomb, push enough of it into someone's throat and it would kill. Don had been lucky, and that was that. _Move on, Eppes_.

Don claimed a team leader's privilege for the questioning of the suspect that David and Colby had brought in. Dammit, he needed _something_ to do besides tap wrong letters onto the keyboard before hitting the spell-check button, which was how he ended up in Interrogation Room Three, talking to Jonathan Martin, of 2121 Folker Ave, Apartment 3H.

He consulted the manila file folder in his hands, wishing that there was more data. Something like a few misdemeanors or even suspicion of armed robbery would do. Nope; not even a parking ticket. Not even a car; the kid got around using public transportation. Considering the kid's salary, that wasn't surprising and it suggested that he hadn't received any large sums of money recently. _Damn_.

In fact, there was only one piece of evidence that Don could question him on, and he went straight for the jugular. "Mr. Martin. Care to tell me why you were purchasing titanium tetrachloride?"

"I…What?" Martin blinked. It wasn't what he was expecting. "What the hell is that? I didn't buy nothing."

Stupid. Just plain stupid. Don shoved the paper with Martin's signature on it across the table at the suspect. "That your name? Your handwriting?" Try to weasel out of that.

Jonathan Martin gaped at the photocopy of the bill, and at his name carefully scrawled at the bottom it. "I…"

"Your signature?" Don pushed, knowing that it was. The proof in the form of a comparison signature was on the next paper, ready to be used if Martin tried to squirm. "Let's start again. Why'd you buy the titanium tetrachloride? Where is it?"

"I…" Martin caved. "I bought it for a friend. He took it."

"A friend." This was too easy. Don wanted hard. He wanted something he could sink his teeth into, not this pipsqueak of a suspect. "This friend have a name?"

"Uh…"

"Name." Don leaned over the desk, breathing. Every muscle carefully relaxed, a coiled spring ready to pounce.

"Uh…Squibb."

"Squibb?" Don let the scorn show. "This 'Squibb' got a real name?"

"Uh…I don't know?" Terrified.

"An address? Staying with you?"

"No. No, he can't. The landlord would throw me out. Us out, I mean." Martin was babbling, and they both knew it. "Man, you gotta believe me! I didn't do nothing wrong! He told me it wasn't illegal to buy the stuff, that teachers and shit did it all the time!"

_Idiot._ Don let the expression show. "If it wasn't illegal, why didn't this 'Squibb' guy buy it himself?"

"He…" It was a new and original thought for Jonathan Martin, and clearly the first one he'd had in several months. "I…"

Enough of this nonsense. Don delivered the carrot, now that the stick had been whacked across Martin's brains. "You give us this 'Squibb' guy, you walk out of here." Martin was as guilty as sin over something, but it didn't have anything to do with this case. Of that, Don was certain. Probably had a stash of something illegal at his place, in which case it would get turned over to LAPD as soon as David and Colby finished tossing the room, although Don doubted that they'd find anything more than that. This Martin guy just wasn't of the caliber to pull off the double bomb sequence.

'Squibb', on the other hand, sounded more promising and Don and company could really use a good lead. The organic stuff that Gatsbacher kept screaming about wasn't going anywhere. It was some concoction of weeds, and that made it devilishly hard to figure out, according to the non-scatological portion of Gatsbacher's report.

Martin was openly trembling by now. Either he needed a quick fix, or he was so scared that he was going to throw up in front of Don. Neither scenario was appealing, and Don tried to head it off. "You got a real name for this guy?"

"No!" It was nothing short of a wail. "He's just a guy that I met."

Translation: Squibb was a petty dealer, and Martin had scored some crack or meth from him which was why Martin was scared to give him up. Okay, that made Squibb more of a person of interest. "Describe him."

"Uh…"

"Height." Don wanted facts, not generalizations.

"Uh…a little bit taller than me?"

Five-eight, five-nine. Don jotted that down. "Weight?"

"Real skinny."

"Skinnier than you?"

"Yeah. A lot skinnier, man."

One thirty, maybe one fifty. Some people packed a lot of muscle, and that would be heavier than fat. Or this guy Squibb could be wasting away with HIV, skinny from that, in which case he could be around one twenty pounds or less. "Hair?"

"Brown. Dark brown."

"Long? Short?"

"Long. Wears it in a pony tail, bald on top, you know?"

_No, I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't be questioning you, genius_. Don mentally adjusted the age to someone who would be starting to go bald. "Why did he want the titanium tetrachloride?" Damn, but Don was getting good. The chemical phrase rolled off of his tongue almost as well as it did from the professors of his acquaintance.

The shaking increased. "I don't know."

"Yeah?" Don was openly skeptical.

"I mean, he didn't tell me, man! I just figured he needed it for…you know…"

Yeah, Don did know. This poor excuse for a human being in front of him thought that Squibb, his connection, needed the stuff to make meth or whatever else he was selling, and that Martin would get a cut of the profits or at least a taste of the meth for his help in procuring the chemical. Don really hoped that David and Colby would find something good in Martin's apartment, so that this quivering lump of protoplasm could get properly arrested and placed into a drug rehab somewhere to de-tox. Not that it would do any good, not according to the statistics that crossed Don's desk with dismaying regularity, but he could always hope. As his brother said, there was always that one chance.

Don finished the interview. "You pick him out of the books, you walk out of here," he told Martin, as if he intended to hold him if Martin didn't come through. _Not gonna waste the jail space on you, dude. You're not worth the effort it would take to book you._

"You mean it?" Martin brightened. The trembling slowed.

"Yeah," Don said, trying to keep the sarcasm from getting too heavy. With any luck, by the time Martin finished looking at mug shots, David and Colby would have turned the evidence over to LAPD and two cops would be waiting outside the FBI's door to take possession of both the evidence and of Jonathan Martin.

Megan joined him outside of Interrogation Three. "Nice work."

Don grunted. "Not a tough one. Not much there."

Megan had to agree with him. "What about this 'Squibb' character?"

Don shrugged. "Who knows? It's more of a lead than anything else so far. Hopefully David and Colby'll bring back something to track him down. Anything from forensics?"

Megan's face froze, as he knew that it would. The profiler kept her face carefully blank. "Not a thing. Larry's with Gatsbacher right now."

Which meant that the earthquake that would separate Los Angeles from the rest of the continental United States wouldn't be far behind…


	6. If It Moves, Shoot It

"So what does this titanium tetra-whatever look like?" David wanted to know, stepping into Martin's digs.

"Man, is this dude messy, or what?" Colby was right behind him. "Titanium tetrachloride is a fine white powder, easy to put up into the air," he responded, looking around, trying to decide where putting his foot down wouldn't end up with something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. To say that Jonathan Martin was a poor housekeeper was similar to describing the Pacific Ocean as moist. It simply didn't do the man justice.

There were banana peels on the floor. They had landed there because the trash can was overflowing with things that neither David nor Colby dared to attempt to identify but were currently growing a crop of something blue and fuzzy. David threw a look at Colby: _if it moves, I'm shooting it_. There was a blanket nearby along with a pillow. No bed, no bed frame—clearly mattresses were for wimps who were afraid to sleep on the floor. There were streaks of something dark and unpleasant and foul-smelling on the walls.

"Looks like two people living here," Colby said, pointing out the dual sets of dishes on the kitchen table still valiantly standing despite a broken leg. "The Squibb guy that Martin was talking about?"

"Probably. What say we stake out the place, see if he comes back?"

"What, you don't want to look around for the titanium tetrachloride?"

"It's not here."

"You haven't looked hard enough," Colby accused. "I'm sure we can find some white powder around somewhere."

David shook his head. "White powder crystal meth, sure. Titanium tetra-whatever, no."

"Who says?"

David shrugged. "Larry says. Larry said that if the stuff comes in contact with water or metal, it'll go up in flames." He gestured to the mess surrounding them. "Trust me on this, Colby. We'd have had a fire here, if Squibb kept it here." He sighed. "Stake out. You want to get the first round of coffee, or shall I?"

* * *

Larry put the phone call onto the speaker. "Charles, we've had some partial success. Gatsbacher has finally managed to identify one of the components of the secondary dust as the species Nymphaeaceae, more commonly known as the white water lily. It is well-established in the Indian sub-continent, and has no known medicinal uses and no reason to be included in any incendiary device."

Charlie's voice emerged from the speaker. "How about sources? Is that a limiting factor?"

"Unfortunately, no. The flower has been imported to several different parts of the world, and a brief Internet search has revealed that it is considered a weed in the nearby San Joaquin Valley. It would be fairly easy for someone to obtain enough specimens and then to dry the stamen for use in this dust."

Gatsbacher spoke up. "Need room to dry the damn things, _Fleinhardt_."

"I stand corrected, Charles," Larry said sarcastically. "_Gatsbacher_ has reminded me that wherever we find the culprit, it will be with a connection to an area large enough to allow the ambient dry air to dry the stamen to dust. Of course, our suspect _could_ be clever enough to use a dehydrator," he added. "That would reduce both the quantity of space and of time required for the operation, _Gatsbacher_."

Clearly the pair were getting along famously. There hadn't been a curse word in any language for three whole minutes, and Charlie said so.

Larry sniffed. "Gatsbacher ran out of unique phrases some twenty-four hours hence," he informed his colleague. "Repetition, of course, is unacceptable under the circumstances."

"Of course," Charlie echoed, not understanding in the slightest why Gatsbacher couldn't use the same curse twice. After all, it wasn't as though Larry would recognize any of them.

"And you, Charles? Are you making progress?"

"I am." The pair in the forensics lab heard the scrape of Charlie's chair as he pushed it back from his desk. "Those digital frames that Don brought me? They're paying off. I've been able to create the image of one figure that is identical in each of the crimes, within a reasonable margin of error. I have hopes for two more, but this is labor-intensive work. The computers aren't doing a good job with judgment calls, so I've built in a number of decision points where human input is required. It's slow, but it's working nicely."

"Waste of time. Can't use it for identification in court."

"Sure, but that's not the point," Charlie said to Gatsbacher. "Don can't find them. Once we identify the possibilities, we can narrow down the list of suspects through other means. Access to titanium tetrachloride, for example. Cross-match that to access to white water lilies." He chuckled. "I think we've even got some white water lilies in the goldfish pond out back, if I haven't killed them off, yet."

"You can hang up now, Eppes. Get back to work. Don't keep 'im waiting."

"Okay. Thanks, Gatsbacher. See you, Larry." Charlie broke the connection.

Larry turned to Gatsbacher, scowling. "What if I had additional information to impart, Gatsbacher?"

"You? You _never_ have information to impart, _Fleinhardt_."

"I did. I have deciphered the make up of the trigger to the incendiary device. It is a—"

"Save it, _Fleinhardt_. You can tell Eppes later. He's busy right now."

"Of course, he's busy, you dolt! He's working on his program—"

"No, he's not." Gatsbacher sat back, regarding the physicist with a smirk.

"Really? Upon what do you base your baseless opinion—"

"He's meeting his brother," Gatsbacher interrupted, putting the test tube down. "Let's go."

"Go? Go where?"

Gatsbacher glared at Larry. "Lunch, idiot. _Eppes_ is going to lunch. _I'm_ going to lunch. You coming?"

* * *

Don liked combining tasks. He liked being efficient, and combining tasks made him feel efficient. For Charlie it was when the numbers fell together, and for Don it was when the small clues turned into one or more large convictions.

He was well on his way with this one. There had been four crimes, each using the two stage bomb and each using that hellish concoction that Gatsbacher and Larry were working on. Even better: he'd finally persuaded Charlie that the four crimes were connected—not quite accurate, and Charlie had already reminded him of that at least twice. The crimes were connected, but the connections weren't such that Charlie could put them into a pattern. That is, no pattern until Don had pointed it out to his brother. That was another reason to feel good, that he'd recognized the pattern and Charlie hadn't.

That meant that this crime would soon be coming to a conclusion. Larry and Gatsbacher would identify the substance, or enough of it that it could be linked to the eventual suspects, and Don didn't mean the hapless Martin who was still leafing through the mug shots as though his life depended on it. Megan had let him know that Martin was putting some effort into the task, and Don let the chore go on. More evidence, better case, and that wasn't even going close to the concept of keeping Megan away from Gatsbacher with Larry around. _Menage a trois_, FBI style.

He parked the car in the lot closest to Charlie's office, closing up his cell. The call to his brother had gone straight to voicemail, and he guessed that Charlie was on the phone with Larry and the Fiend from Forensics. For his own part, Don was avoiding the forensics lab as though the plague was running rampant through the test tubes, and doing a good job of distracting Megan as well. The profiler had been rebuffed from the lab several times, and was ready to tear someone apart. Don ticked off the list of candidates for dismemberment: Don himself, for allowing Larry Fleinhardt anywhere near Gatsbacher. David, for introducing the two. Colby, for not throwing himself in front of Larry in a vain effort to prevent catastrophe when David had introduced the two. Charlie, for not having the sense to keep the two apart in the first place. Even Larry himself was going to come in for his own share of retribution; Don had heard that the physicist had gotten so caught up in his research that he'd forgotten his date last night with Megan. _Man, you are so dead. Even a dozen roses won't get you out of this one, Larry._

Just another reason to close this case up quickly and get the budding romance back on track. His cell beeped at him: a text. Charlie had intercepted the call, correctly deduced that his brother had arrived on the CalSci campus, and was coming downstairs to meet him instead of making Don walk up to Charlie's office. Don approved; the elevator in the building stood a fifty-fifty chance of working on any given day. Charlie always insisted that the probability was more in the range of sixty-forty and usually handed out a homework assignment to the freshmen to calculate the exact number each year, but Don didn't care. The point was that Don didn't have to take the stairs, and they could hit the deli on the corner of campus before the usual lunch rush set in.

Charlie had more information for him. His brother had let him know that he'd consulted some people on campus about the Deshwanee, and wanted to share. Don shrugged to himself; he'd already done a search on the FBI databanks and sent out a query to some experts in Washington, but every little bit helped. The answer from Washington was something along of the lines of _lovely fairy tale, call us with some real crime_, but Don wasn't finished. Once started, someone in Washington with as tenacious a brain as Charlie's would take an interest and pull up something a little more substantial. Don wouldn't be surprised if there was a preliminary packet of information about his 'fairy tale' sitting in his inbox by the time he got back from lunch with Charlie.

More importantly, Charlie had told him that the computer program he'd set in motion was starting to see results. There was at least one common figure in each crime, and Charlie hadn't yet ruled out that more would emerge. It wouldn't be an identification that would hold up in court, but that wasn't the point. Figure out who was behind this mess, and the proof would follow.

In the meantime, where was Charlie? He'd said that he'd be right down, and that was five minutes ago. Had the man gotten distracted by something? It wouldn't be the first time. Don glanced at his cell in annoyance, noting that the time had advanced to seven minutes of lateness.

No help for it. Don would have to trek upstairs and drag Charlie away from whatever math problem had kidnapped him in the middle of leaving. With a sigh, Don trudged inside, giving the recalcitrant elevator a glare before deciding not to chance it.

All was quiet around Charlie's office, and Don knew the signs. Something had popped up, most likely from the computer since Don could hear the whirring of the electronic marvel out here in the hall. Then he frowned; what he _didn't_ hear was the tapping of his brother's fingers on the keyboard, and that was odd. Don would have expected that Charlie would be busily typing away, entering more functions for the laptop to wrestle with while Charlie was out lunching and giving his brother an update on his progress.

Something wasn't right, and it was making the hair stand up on the back of Don's neck. He checked for his handgun, unlatching it in its holster but not yet pulling it out. Wouldn't he look foolish, pulling a gun on his own brother as he sat in his office? Still, the weight of the piece felt damn good at his side.

Still no noise from Charlie, just a plaintive beep for attention from the computer. Was his brother even in there? Had Charlie passed him on the way down, taken the elevator down instead of the stairs? Possible, but not likely. Charlie, too, tended to use the stairs as interim exercise, especially down.

The door was cracked open. Good; that would make it easy to get inside. With a quick look up and down the empty hallway—he was feeling foolish enough as it was with no need for witnesses to observe the Fed in Action—he eased the door further open so that he could peer inside.

Computer: on the desk, still beeping. Charlie, sitting in his chair, eyes wide open and staring blankly off into space.

His brother wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything, wasn't even paying attention to the laptop. What the hell—?

There was nothing normal about this. Don eased the door open a bit further. No one else was in the room. Charlie was alone. "Charlie?"

No response. His brother continued to stare into space. It was as if he had been turned into a statue.

"Charlie!" Don slid into the room, careful not to touch anything. First things first: there were no bombs that he could see, either one or two stage, although privately he thought that a bomb might be the only remedy for the mess that habitually followed Charlie wherever he went.

Still no response. Don pulled out his cell phone, trying not to touch anything in the room. He could almost see a silvery dust covering Charlie's desk, motes of the substance lingering in the air where someone like a world class mathematician might inhale them. _Crap_. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. Cold seeped through his veins.

The cell call went straight to Megan. "Reeves."

"Megan, it's Don. I want an ambulance, and a forensics team over at Charlie's office, in that order. Right now, Megan." Don kept the panic from his voice.

"On it." Don heard the woman issue the orders, and she came back on the line. "They should be there in a couple of minutes. Are you okay?"

"It's Charlie. He's not moving, just like the hostages at the bank job. Oh, and I think I may smell Larry's scent—"

"Don?" Charlie looked around. "Oh, hey, Don. I didn't see you come in." He started to get up.

"Don't move, Charlie!"

"Huh?" Charlie froze, eyes wide. "What—?"

"Buddy, I've been here for five minutes," Don announced grimly. "You weren't moving."

"But, I…" Charlie's voice trailed off as he took in the information—and the implications.

"Right. Don't touch anything," Don warned. "How do you feel? Breathing okay? No, don't take a deep breath. You'll inhale more of that crap."

Charlie gulped. "I'm fine. Just…surprised."

"Yeah. Surprised." That was the understatement of the year. "Okay, I want you to back away from the desk. Just push your chair back, stand up, and walk around it over to me. Megan, you can cancel the ambulance," he said into the phone. "I'll get Charlie checked out by the campus health services, but he seems okay. Make sure that it's Gatsbacher you send for forensics, with a vacuum. I'll have Charlie go through his laptop to check if it's been tampered with—after it's been cleaned. In the meantime, buddy," and he turned back to Charlie, "I want a list of everyone who knows that you're working on this case. Didn't you say that you'd consulted a professor of Indian history on campus?"

* * *

"Same stuff, Eppes, this dust crap," Gatsbacher said, eyes glittering. "I'll lay odds on it. Same consistency, same refractive index, same smell, same behavior. I'll run tests to be certain, but they won't tell me anything I don't already know." The forensics scientist scanned Charlie's office with satisfaction, pausing just an extra moment or two over the sight of Larry hovering over Charlie. A malicious grin followed. "You're pissing somebody off. Nice."

"Yeah, well, how 'bout you do your job, Gatsbacher, so that whoever it is can get even more pissed off when we arrest his ass?" Don was still trying to tamp down the fear. This was a clear change of direction for the case. Before, it had been relatively innocuous. Sure, there'd been a murder victim but Don was willing to put that down to the guy having the mother of all allergic reactions when he'd gotten a face full of the stuff now coating Charlie's desk. It hadn't been intentional, of that Don was certain, and he was willing to say the same for his own little mini-vacation in the hospital a couple of days ago following a certain bank job. Everything had been aimed at grabbing some unearned wealth, with no particular efforts going toward offing some innocent bystanders.

This was different. This wasn't just a bunch of crooks doing their 'job'. This was deliberate, and personal. This was _Charlie_. The suspects hadn't been after some loot, and Charlie happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody, somewhere, had decided that Charlie was getting too close and had come in to take a look at just how close the mathematician was coming.

Still…nothing had happened. Charlie was still alive, if a bit pale now that the reality of the situation had sunk in. It would have been just as easy for the perps to kill him as he lay helpless in the grip of that damn devil dust. Why hadn't they? Was it because they'd figured out that Charlie was going in the wrong direction?

Which meant… "Gatsbacher," Don called out, "see if there are any prints on the laptop."

"Way ahead of you, dimwit. Wiped clean."

Right. Don could always hope. It did, however, give him a direction.

Charlie had been working on a program to establish the size and build of the common members of the three crimes. The fact that the intruder had gone right for the computer after disabling Charlie spoke volumes. Who had known that Charlie was working on it? Pretty much everyone on campus, Don thought, since Charlie had mentioned it during one of his lectures—the computer graphics class, Charlie had said. Non-cinema uses for graphics imaging, and how the math of such things could impact pursuit of crime. Nothing like real life drama.

However, Charlie was continuing to breathe, and Don wasn't naïve enough to believe it was by accident. Whoever had done this had walked in, sprinkled fairy dust over Charlie, and then had taken a long hard look at what Charlie had on his laptop. Hah; this suggested that Charlie was moving in an entirely wrong direction. If Charlie was truly getting close, he'd be _dead_. Don shivered with the thought.

Next step: Don walked over to where Charlie sat, a cup of something hot in hands that Charlie was valiantly trying to keep from trembling. Larry too was just as upset, and Don couldn't blame either man one bit. It was one thing to help with the research into crime. It was quite another to have the research come back and bite the consultant on the ass. Charlie looked pretty bitten.

Don gentled his voice. "Buddy, I'm going to need you to look at your laptop, once it's been wiped clean of that dust stuff."

Charlie understood at once. "You think that whoever was here may have looked at the programming."

"It's a possibility." Something else occurred to Don: this narrowed down the list of possibilities. They were now looking for someone whose expertise included not only ancient Indian fairy dust production but a fairly sophisticated knowledge of computers, as well. The screen would have been there for the taking, with Charlie's mind 'out to lunch', but someone still would have been looking over Charlie's shoulder at what was being worked on and would need to be able to decipher the information in the few minutes before Don himself had arrived in Charlie's office.

Crap, that meant that there was a damn good possibility that Don had passed the intruder in the hall! Don racked his brain; had there been anyone? Maybe. Not many, that was for sure. He remembered thinking that the hall was quiet for this time of day. He hadn't been paying attention, and now he regretted it. There hadn't been any reason to pay attention to the passersby, but he regretted it just the same. The case could have been over by now if he had.

Gatsbacher walked over and dumped the laptop onto Charlie. "Check it out, Eppes. It's clean."

Still trembling, Charlie seized the opportunity to cling to a familiar object. Within mere moments the screen was bathing his face with its rays, turning him an unhealthy shade of pale, but Don knew that the look was deceiving. Charlie was now better than he'd been for the past half hour, plunging back into research. That task could restore his brother like nothing else.

It didn't take long. "Nothing," Charlie reported to the people staring at him. "The program's still here. It got interrupted, and that will delay the results for another couple of hours, but it doesn't look as though they had enough time to destroy it. We were lucky, Don. You must have arrived before they could erase the hard drive, and they ran off."

"Lucky indeed, Charles," Larry observed. "You could have been killed."

"Yeah, but he wasn't," Gatsbacher interrupted brusquely. "Sounds like your programming isn't any threat, Eppes."

"Hey—" Charlie half-rose in protest.

"If it were any _real _threat, you'd be dead." Gatsbacher had no concept of tact. "They'd have bashed you over the head. Try something else, Eppes. Your math has gotta be good for something. Figure out something else."

Gatsbacher was correct, even if Don didn't want to admit it. He changed the subject. "C'mon, Charlie. I still want to get you checked out by someone with a stethoscope who knows how to use it."

"Don—!"

Don chuckled, relieved. It sounded so much like the ten year old that he'd grown up with, forcing the kid to get cleaned up before Mom and Dad saw whatever mess he'd gotten himself into. Charlie was coming out of his moments of terror, which meant that Don also would relax. "You, too, Larry. Come along with us, and I'll spring for lunch afterward. I need to get you two out of here so that Gatsbacher can finish up in Charlie's office," he told them before they could object.

"Get out, Eppes," Gatsbacher agreed, without specifying which Eppes. "You, too, _Fleinhardt_. I got _work _to do."

Don dragged Larry away before World War III could get started.

They didn't get far. All of the commotion inside Charlie's office had generated a crowd at the end of the corridor, held back by FBI-jacketed personnel. Don recognized the type: those who were drawn to any sort of excitement like moths to an open flame. Several were holding up cell phones and taking both still and video pictures in the hopes of getting something good. Don tried to protect his brother and the physicist from the crowd.

The ploy wasn't going to work. It was going to be scuttled by his well-meaning brother. Charlie, recognizing someone in the crowd, broke away. "Hey, wait, Don! Look, there's Ted! Ted, this is my brother, Don," he said, pulling a slender young man from the crowd, oblivious to the instant alarm that both Don and the FBI guard showed at the approach of an unauthorized person. "Don, this is the grad student that I told you about, Ted Belkins. Ted is doing research on the Deshwanee," he added in a completely gratuitous aside. He turned back to Ted. "Walk with us," Charlie requested. "Tell me some more about the Deshwanee."

Don was able to move the group to quieter ground before the academics couldn't stand to be without the flow of information, out on the sidewalks of CalSci and steering them toward the campus Health Clinic. No matter what, Don intended to have Charlie checked out; the memories of his own brush with death from that dust stuff were still more than crisp in his mind. It didn't seem likely at this point, but Don wasn't about to take needless risks. They didn't have anything better to do for the next hour, and that included lectures by grad students delving into Indian history. Health was a greater priority.

Which was not the attitude of the other three. They had already plunged into their discussion, and Don could barely keep up with the fast and furious flood of information.

"—information badly substantiated—"

"—Kali-worship—"

"—raised a small child from the dead. Just a legend, you understand, but—"

"—master herbalists—"

It was tough, but Don found that the best way to inhale the information was to concentrate first on what came out of the grad student's mouth, and then watch Charlie and Larry for their response. If the two professors exchanged an 'aha!' moment, then the factoid was pertinent. If they didn't, then Don didn't bother to remember what had just been presented.

He didn't learn a lot more that seemed pertinent. Sure, all knowledge was valuable, but some less valuable in the present context and knowing that the Maharajah of Wherever had kept a stable filled with the Deshwanee in case one of the kids skinned a knee back a couple of centuries ago wasn't going to advance the case.

The grad student seemed even more interested in Larry's discussion with the monks, declaring that it was some of the finest secondary source information that he'd come across, extracting a promise from Larry for an introduction. This Don listened to with greater interest; this was data on that damn devil dust, and Don wanted to know more about it.

The dust, he gathered, wasn't easy to make. It required several distillations of certain plants, most of which were found only in inaccessible places on the sub-continent of India—"not all that inaccessible," Charlie sniffed. "Either that, or someone has found some really close substitutes right here in L.A."—and the resulting soggy mess dried to a powder only in the light of the full moon. Don further learned that organic mixtures of this sort tended to be very difficult to reproduce in a lab, hence the lack of progress from Gatsbacher. That piece of data was delivered through Larry's grinding teeth.

The discussion continued through Charlie's visit to the Health Clinic, and the mathematician picked up where he'd left off after receiving a clean bill of health as if nothing had interrupted his part of the conversation.

Information about the Deshwanee themselves was even more problematic. No one, until just yesterday, believed that the cult was still in existence and even now the grad student wasn't about to declare the revival. There were too many other things to consider, including that someone had found an old bottle of the dust and was putting it to good use. It was a possibility, Don allowed. There was a brisk import business done in this area, and someone could have run across an old artifact and not known what it was—until that first sniff.

Don let himself tune the three out, trying to come up with a plan of attack. Figuring out the components of the dust wouldn't likely lead them anywhere—or would it? Don played around with that notion for another moment. Import businesses: there were a lot of them in the L.A. port, but not all dealt with India and even fewer handled low tech goods where an urn of devil dust could slip through. It was a good idea, and he said so.

The other three gave him a long and surprised stare, and then returned to their discussion of the Deshwanee.

Not a problem. There was a reason that Charlie and Larry were consultants, and Don was the SAC. This was Don's case. He got to make the decisions, and right now his decision was that while researching the Deshwanee was interesting, it wasn't going to solve the case. He pulled out his cell and called his team.

_Much_ more gratifying: his team leaped onto the idea with enthusiasm.

Don turned back to the trio, closing up his phone. "Charlie, your office has been cleared by forensics," he offered. "You ready for lunch?"

Charlie spared him a brief glance, the gleam of impending knowledge bright in his eye. "No time for that," he declared, the other two nodding fervently. "Let's go back to my office; we can continue this discussion there."

"Charles, your office is a pigsty under the best of conditions. Mr. Belkins, I'd like to offer my own space—"

"Whatever," Charlie interrupted. He turned back to Don. "Listen, can I take a raincheck on lunch? I'll let you know what we come up with later tonight."

Don sighed. Sometimes it was tough, being the brother of a genius.

* * *

The signs were there: the owner of the import business was lying to them. Megan could tell the signs clearly. There was the narrowing of the pupils, the refusal to meet her eyes—and that wasn't cultural, no matter what some lawyers would try to argue. This was not a case in which someone who had grown up in a different country was trying to behave according to his accustomed norms. This dirt bag was dirty. The question was: connected to their case? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question, and one that would only be answered by a quick, or perhaps a _thorough_, search of the warehouse.

Trouble was, taking the time for a warrant would allow whatever it was inside to be removed or perhaps destroyed altogether. This had been a fishing expedition that Don had come up with. It was a good plan, since there were only six businesses that qualified as being worthy of investigation, but one of six didn't make for particularly good odds. Megan could feel Colby, beside her, getting antsy over the owner's antics.

She sighed. "Mr. Rajendra," she said, "we don't believe that you are involved in anything illegal." Lie, but in a good cause. "We are simply looking for a container of some organic matter, perhaps something that was accidentally shipped to your warehouse. It would make all of our lives easier to have your permission to do a brief search of the contents of your building, and then we could cross off your establishment and move on." That was certainly the truth, as well as the carrot. Now it was time for the stick. "However, if you insist, Mr. Rajendra, we'll obtain a warrant."

Mr. Rajendra was being obstinate. "You do that," he told her. "I will wait. I know my rights. I will have my lawyer waiting for you."

"It is certainly your right to do that, Mr. Rajendra." Megan kept calm, even though Colby was all but pacing behind her. "We will return with the warrant, and you can have your lawyer verify that it was legally obtained. I will warn you, though, that if you insist that we do that, then we will request that the judge permit us to legally seize not just evidence regarding the importation of the organic material that we are looking for, but anything else of questionable integrity. Examining everything in your warehouse could take days, Mr. Rajendra," she pushed, noting the sharp increase in his alarm.

Colby too saw the wedge. "Weeks," he offered. "Who knows what we would find? Even innocent mistakes could take a month or longer to clear up."

"You are threatening me!"

"No, Mr. Rajendra, we are not," Megan said firmly. "We are very willing to go through the motions so that we both are satisfied. Out of the goodness of our hearts—" _right_—"we are warning you of the process, so that you can make the best decision on how to conduct your business. There is no threat involved, merely a statement of facts." She smiled brightly, communicating more than simple facts.

Both could see the decision-making process weave slowly through the man's mind. It would all depend on what he had inside. If the illegal goods were either connected to the case or of such magnitude that the FBI couldn't overlook it, then the man would refuse the offer. If that happened, then Megan would make a fast call to her boss and hope that they could steal enough manpower to keep the goods from disappearing until the warrant could arrive at the scene. It would almost certainly connect Rajendra to the case, but Megan and everyone else wanted something more. They wanted evidence strong enough to haul a bunch of suspects in and put them away for a very long time.

"All right," Rajendra gave in with poor grace. "I let you look."

Damn. Megan wasn't certain which she had hoped would happen more. That Rajendra was going to allow the search meant that they likely wouldn't find anything.

No help for it; she shrugged her shoulders. "C'mon, Colby," she said, trudging off after Rajendra toward the entrance to the warehouse.

Colby too recognized the signs of impending futility. "Right," he grumbled.


	7. I'll Take Luck Any Day

"We're on it," Don declared, hanging up the phone and reaching for his jacket. "We got lucky, David. An LAPD rookie recognized one of the pieces from the jewelry store heist, sitting in a pawn shop."

"I'll take luck any day," David vowed fervently, likewise grabbing his coat and tapping his holster with an automatic gesture, just to reassure himself that he was fully dressed. "What did the pawn shop owner say?"

"It gets better and better," Don told him gleefully. "Guy tried to run; the rookie chased him down and is sitting on him and the piece. They're waiting for us at the shop."

* * *

_Most enlightening_. Except for the incident that had brought them all together, Charlie had thoroughly enjoyed his subsequent meeting with the young grad student and having Larry there only enhanced the experience. Larry's time with the monks served them all well, in that he was able to relate several legends that the monks knew with respect to the Deshwanee. Ted Belkins had listened in rapture, drinking in the tales and taking notes as well as expounding on some of the cultural aspects of the group.

A great deal of the information Charlie could discount. Raising a child from the dead with mere herbs? Doubtful. It was more likely that the child only appeared dead, or even more plausible that it was simply a tall tale created by the cult to enhance their standing among the villages. It was a time-honored technique, starting back in the early days of fishing when the Neanderthal came back to his mate in the cave saying, "you should have seen the one that got away!" Some of the other potions that the group was reputed to have concocted were of similar dubious efficacy. If they had truly created a love potion, then there would have been some villagers grown very rich off of the proceeds, never mind the screechings of the Federal Drug Administration for allowing herbals concoctions of dubious demeanor into the country.

On the other hand, the monks had generated Larry's thesis that the scent and the actions of the dust were akin to something that the Deshwanee were supposed to have invented. The monks used similar preparations, but had never been able to achieve the same results and nor had they desired to. The monks, Larry informed them, desired to enhance man's mind rather than to suppress it. They valued order over chaos, and blanking out the soul for even those few precious moments seemed to them to be a gross crime against humanity and reason.

Charlie pulled himself back to his original computer program. Talking about a resurrected cult was all well and good, but beyond the dust that created such a stir, there was little hard evidence for Don and his team to work with. Charlie intended to remedy that situation; hence, the computer program. It was Don's suggestion, and a good one, that Charlie determine the size and shape of the perpetrators of the four crimes based on comparisons of the hooded figures in the frames from the crime scenes. The suspects had been able to erase most of the evidence by drugging the bystanders, but they hadn't been able to completely destroy everything.

At Don's request, Charlie had quickly reviewed the laptop and determined that no damage had been done. No one had produced a heavy magnet from their pocket and wiped clean the hard drive with all of Charlie's work. Not that it would have mattered; Charlie was well aware of how difficult it would be to reproduce the work that he had on the electronic marvel, and routinely backed up his work onto the external hard drive that was part of the CalSci network. All of Cognitive Emergence work was there—well, most of it. There were a few small points that he hadn't backed up yet; no, wait, yes he had. He distinctly remembered the automatic recovery program whirring into action, slowing down the identification graphics program, to the point where he considered turning it off and postponing the auto-recovery failsafe until after he'd finished Don's task.

The phone had interrupted him, Charlie remembered, and he hadn't turned off the recovery program. Now he was grateful; the data, or most of it, was safe. If he'd postponed the recovery process, then he was certain that whoever his assailant was would have damaged the laptop beyond repair. Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong. Not only would the identification program been lost, but much of his Cognitive Emergence as well. _Might as well shoot me if that happened_, Charlie thought wryly to himself. _No cognition would be emerging after that_.

He fired up the computer once again, clicking through the files in order to engage the identification program once more, noting with satisfaction that the computer had successfully identified one figure that was consistent in each crime. That suspect was five foot ten, weight estimated to be one hundred sixty-three pounds, give or take five pounds. His waist—and Charlie was making a leap of faith that it was a man, based on his observations of the gait of the figure compared to other standardized readings—was likely near thirty four inches around. An average size man, then, one not exceptionally small but neither would he be recognized as needing to go to the tall men's store for his clothing. Off the rack would do, with just a bit of tailoring to hem up the trousers, and that was assuming that the man wore something other than the jeans that he had showed up in with each of the crime scenes.

That was one description that could be sent off to Don for follow up. Charlie wasn't certain how helpful it would be, but that wasn't his fault. Of the four million inhabitants of the Greater Los Angeles basin, Charlie was willing to estimate that some three hundred thousand would fit the general description, plus or minus 10 percent. No, maybe he'd best err on the side of caution: plus or minus _12_ percent. He decided to put that information into an email for his older brother. It wasn't as though it was going to be particularly useful, and certainly not anything for which he would pull Don out of a meeting. All Charlie could show was the general outline of the man. No skin tones, no hair color, nothing but a height and weight.

On the other hand, Charlie consoled himself, he'd ruled out some 90 percent of Los Angeles. Perhaps, if Don got some suspects, he could further narrow the field down by using Charlie's calculations. It would be even more useful if Charlie could do the same for another one of the figures in the frames, and he turned back to the program.

Wait a minute. The program was telling him that it had only made a partial identification of one additional figure. Charlie could have sworn that he remembered the results looking like two more beyond the one already identified.

Couldn't have been. There it was, clear as day on the screen: one additional possibility. All the other figures from the frames of the security cams from the crimes were singletons. The core group that hadn't changed was merely comprised of two members rather than three.

Then why was Charlie remembering three? He must be making a mistake.

However, the more he thought about it, the more doubtful he became. Charlie had made plenty of mistakes in his life and fully expected to make plenty more, but he knew that he had a tendency to recall certain numbers and that the numbers in this project were some of them. There was always a possibility that he had remembered incorrectly, but…

This would be a two computer task. Charlie had no intention of allowing the contents of the recovery drive to come near his personal laptop, not at the moment. Tomorrow, after he'd finished examining the previously backed up version of his work, he would laugh at his paranoia but Professor Charles Eppes had spent too much time on his Cognitive Emergence to allow it anywhere near a possibly compromised machine, never mind looking at the identification program. He hit the well-memorized extension to the campus Information Technology Department and spoke into the handset. "Hey, Vicki, it's Charlie. Listen, do you have a spare laptop I can scrounge for a day or two? Great; I'll be right over."

Charlie briefly debated giving Don a call to let him know these new developments, and regretfully decided against it. What if he _had_ made a mistake? That it was only two figures, and not one? Don would not be pleased to be pulled off whatever piece of the puzzle he was working on to jump at shadows. No, better to tell him when and if it turned out that Charlie was correct, and that would be _after_ he'd compared the two versions of his work.

Charlie pushed back his chair and headed out toward the Computer Building.

* * *

The pawn shop wasn't in the best of areas, but it was reachable in fairly short order despite needing to park the Suburban three blocks away. Don walked through the front door, removing his shades against the dim light, feeling more than seeing David backing him up. He took a moment to look around.

There wasn't much that was unexpected. There were several electric guitars and a couple of basses dotted throughout the place; musicians so down on their luck that they'd had to give up the tools of their trade. Knives were another hot item with an entire glass case devoted to their storage. Jewelry took up a third of the case area, and Don immediately spotted the necklace that had caught the rookie's eye. It was slender, a gold chain with tiny links that looked almost seamless against each other, all carrying a glittering sapphire pendant that insisted on twinkling even in this dim light. Hah; was that the pair of onyx cuff links that had likewise gone missing in the jewelry store robbery? They'd have to go through this guy's inventory piece by piece.

The scene was under control with the presumed owner of the pawn shop sitting sullenly on a stool, his wrists cuffed behind him and glaring at everyone that he laid eyes on. He was a tall man with more muscle on his chest than most of the pawn shop owners of Don's recollection. In fact, Don almost thought he recognized the dude… "Benny? Benny Dutorski?"

The pawn shop owner looked up and squinted. "Eppes?" There was no welcome.

The man was equally well known to David. "Benny Dutorski," he greeted the man in handcuffs without warmth. "They said you were going straight. I guess they lied."

"I guess I was set up," Benny shot back. "How was I supposed to know they was stolen? I don't keep no freakin' list for no cops." He looked like he wanted to spit, and only held back because it was his store and he would be the one to clean it up later. He tossed a glare at the rookie who had been his downfall. "Bitch."

"I'll take that in the spirit in which it was offered," the rookie told him, attitude in every inch of her slender frame.

Don gave her a second glance; this little chick had taken down Benny, the guy who'd wrestled in the ring before deciding that crime paid better and hurt less? "Betancourt, right?"

The attitude switched over to the feds who were moving in on her case. "That's right," she told him, "and this is my collar."

"Federal case," Don told her, not backing down one inch, marking her as someone who would either get burned taking too many chances during a shoot-out or would rise like a meteor through the ranks. "You can have him if he cooperates. You hear that, Benny? You want the federal pen, or you want to stay penny-ante with the locals, maybe out in ninety days?"

"Like you got a case," Benny sneered, trying to make it look good.

"Oh, honey, we've got a case against your ass," Betancourt assured him, looking down her nose. "You _ran_, baby. You ran like a scared rabbit."

_Hah_. Betancourt could want the investigation as much as she liked, but she was local and a beat cop at that. This was an FBI investigation. Don stepped forward, cutting off her view and her access to the suspect. "Talk to me, Benny, and I don't push the federal angle of this. You know that's worth a lot, with your record. You could go up for fifteen, maybe twenty, be an old gray man before you're released. Unless you cooperate," he added.

Benny considered. "What do you want, Eppes?"

Don knew _exactly_ what he wanted. "You finger the dude who sold you the necklace, and anything else from that particular robbery, and I turn you over to the hotshot behind me who wants you bad and is only regretting that she can't put you away for as long as I can. Hell, with a good lawyer, Benny, you can probably get off with thirty days and thirty hours of community service."

Benny nodded. There was no better offer coming his way. "White dude. Young, mid-twenties. Light hair, light eyes."

"Eye color?"

"Couldn't see it all that well in this light. Blue, maybe. Wore a black tee with faded words on it, looked like some kind of Middle Eastern shit writing. Jeans. Nikes had a hole in 'em."

"Name?"

Benny shrugged. "I didn't ask."

David stepped forward. "You put something on a receipt."

Benny wrenched his arms around, displaying the cuffed wrists. "Go find it. I ain't goin' anywhere. Top drawer, on the left."

David went to open the drawer while Don remained right where he was, blocking the beat cop's access to her collar. David pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Which one is it?"

"The one that talks about the sapphire necklace." Benny bit back the derogatory curse that almost slipped out. "It says, 'blue colored stone, gold colored chain."

"Always cautious, aren't you, Benny?" David muttered almost to himself, leafing through the papers. "Here it is. I can barely make out the signature," he complained.

"So send 'im back to Catholic school for penmanship lessons, Sinclair," Benny jibed. "Can we get this over with?"

"You got a name for me?" Don asked.

Another shrug. "Whatever was on the driver's license, Eppes. I looked at his picture; it was pretty much the guy. We was both in a hurry."

"I'll bet," Don agreed. He finally stepped back, allowing Betancourt to move forward. "He's all yours, officer. We'll be taking a copy of the receipt for our investigation, and you can have the original as evidence in Mr. Dutorski's trial. Pleasure doing business."

* * *

"That's him!" Colby was out of the car and running before Megan could put down her coffee.

"Damn." Megan truly regretted the timing; her cup was still hot, and it wouldn't be when they caught up with Squibb.

Maybe. The figure that Colby was chasing fit the description that they had from Jonathan Martin: not especially tall, balding and with a long brown ponytail that right now was flying behind the suspect's head as he fled through the alleys.

Hm. Megan considered the various routes that the suspect would take, the ones that would be good for running through and where they would open up. She thought, and decided that a long draught of hot coffee would help her mind to function more effectively. Then she put the car into gear, and eased out into the scant traffic.

No need for sirens for this one.

* * *

"You're hopeless, _Fleinhardt_!" Gatsbacher roared. "Don't you know your own senses? You were the one who brought it up in the first place!"

"I'm not one of your machines, _Gatsbacher!_" Larry fired back. "You try sniffing fifty odors in a row, and see if you can remember each and every one! There is a certain concept known as nose fatigue—"

"You're wasting time, _Fleinhardt!_ Get that over-sized nose and your over-sized ego to work!"

Which really wasn't fair, Don decided upon reflection. Larry's nose wasn't really over-sized. In fact, as noses went, it was somewhat on the small-ish side, although from what Don could tell it worked perfectly fine. The ego? Don wasn't going to go there. He hadn't gotten to be the SAC of the premier team in the L.A. department by being stupid, and Gatsbacher's own ego was nothing to be sneered at.

Fortunately, Don had a distraction for Gatsbacher, something that would allow the Fiend from Forensics to concentrate on something other than Megan's paramour. He held out a piece of paper for Gatsbacher to look at.

"What's this, Eppes?" Suspicious.

"I need whatever you can give me on the signature," Don told the lab rat. "The guy's involved with the jewelry store heist. You know, the one where the crooks dropped one of your two-stage bombs?"

"Yeah?" Gatsbacher's attention was caught, as Don knew that it would be. "Crappy handwriting."

"Yeah, well, he probably had a pretty good reason for keeping it that way," Don agreed. "You think you can do anything with it?"

"Well, _yeah_, Eppes." Gatsbacher was already drifting toward some high powered lens, staring at the paper. "Pretty long first name, maybe starts with a T…"

Don took Larry by the arm. "Let's leave Gatsbacher alone," he suggested, pulling the physicist out of the forensics lab.

"But…what about the powder?" Larry protested.

"You need a break," Don told him. "You said so yourself. Something about nose fatigue?" _And Megan's coming back to the office. You need to do some serious groveling, Larry. Something about being stood up?_

Larry received the telepathic message. "Uh…quite right, Don. Quite right indeed." He looked around. "The FBI wouldn't, perchance, happen to operate a flower boutique in the lobby, would they?"

* * *

Don stared at Colby. The man was all but limping back up through the halls of the FBI corridor, his clothes torn and more than one smudge of dirt ground into his cheek. "Colby?"

"Waste of time and effort," Colby growled. "Damn waste." He pulled himself together. "Cross the Squibb guy off your list, Don. He's not clean—we got him on possession—but he's not our guy for the bomb case. We caught 'im, we searched his place, and nada. Dead end, Don."

Don tightened his lips. False lead, dead end. "The titanium tetrachloride?"

"Used it for his meth lab. Damn stupid way to run a reaction," Colby snarled. "Even _more_ chance to blow stuff up, including his face. He's lucky we caught him before he set the neighborhood on fire." He paused. "I'm gonna go clean up. See you in a few."

"You do that," Don agreed, knowing that Colby, like the rest of them, kept a spare set of clothes in his locker exactly for this sort of occasion. "Megan okay?"

The frown told Don exactly what he suspected: that Megan had outthought the suspect instead of outrunning him. "Not a scratch on her. Or her clothes."

* * *

Don met with David and Colby, taking the time to pull together what they had for a case—or, to put it more succinctly, what they were lacking.

Don glanced at an empty chair. "Where's Megan?"

David had an unhappy expression. "Last I saw, she was explaining to Larry why he shouldn't associate with people like Gatsbacher. And headed out the door."

Don sighed. They wouldn't see the profiler or the physicist for another hour, at a minimum. Well, they'd just have to do without them for a bit. He supposed that it was only fair, since Larry's time had been taken up by the case, and it wasn't as if they needed Megan to remind them that the case was going nowhere. It was, after all, almost dinner time and Megan's previous assignation for dinner had been unexpectedly interrupted by a certain screaming maniac in the forensics lab. He sighed again. "Let's take it from the top. We've got three crimes—no, four now—each with the two stage bomb that left people snoring with a bad case of dust-induced amnesia. We've got no suspects, because the guy we liked for the titanium tetrachloride turned out to have a side job of making meth. We've got some fairy tales about some bad-ass Indian cult of Kali-worshippers who can raise people from the dead and probably don't exist. That about cover it?"

"You left out a pissed off Forensics Fiend who's gonna solve this thing if it takes forever," Colby offered, carefully not looking at David.

David hurried on to another area. "What about Charlie? Anything?"

Don almost brightened. "His program seems like it's working. He sent me an email about an hour ago, saying that he'd nailed one of the suspects. Height, weight, everything—even the way the guy walks, length of the stride, that sort of thing."

"No hair color," David pointed out.

"True," Don agreed, "but it's more than we had this morning. Look, we were talking about teachers and people like that who might purchase titanium tetrachloride for experiments in a classroom. We can get a list of people like that; teachers who teach in public schools have to be certified. We narrow it down by gender, and then by height and weight. Let's see what we come up with."

"Sounds pretty long and tedious," Colby pointed out.

"You got a better idea—" Don's cell phone interrupted him. "Eppes. Megan?"

David and Colby saw the expression on Don's face change, and both came alive. Something was wrong and it involved Megan and Larry.

"You okay? Larry? Where are you?" Quick look at David and Colby, making certain that neither one was preparing to leave Don's office. He waved a worried hand at them, warning them not to go. "We'll be there in a couple of minutes." He closed up the phone.

"Don?"

"Megan and Larry got mugged," Don informed them. "They were headed for Nunzio's, got about halfway there and three guys jumped them."

"They okay?"

"County General," Don said. "Larry's hand got crunched, Megan said, but other than that they're okay. Let's move."

Don had never been so grateful for the portable strobe light and siren that he could plop on top of the hood to the Suburban that would get him through Los Angeles traffic in record time. It still wasn't fast by any means—this was, after all, L.A.—but it was faster than the surrounding cars wasting more energy honking than proceeding.

He flashed his badge at the hospital desk clerk, earning himself and his team several glares from the unfortunates stuck in the waiting room as the young man passed them through the magic doors into the interior of the emergency department.

Medical stuff all around; Don didn't know which way to turn. There were stretchers in front of him, odd machines with thick plastic tubing behind him, and closed curtains to either side, with moaning people in every direction. Were Megan and Larry behind one of those curtains? Don was about to go peeking inside when Megan stuck her head out of one cubicle further down. "Don! Over here!"

"Megan!" At least one of his flock was able to stand up and converse coherently. That meant that any injury she'd suffered was minor.

That left Larry. Don pushed his way into the cubicle to see Dr. Lawrence Fleinhardt lying on the bed with a hospital gown over his chest, an intravenous line attached to one limb, and a large and bulky white covering mummifying the other.

"Donnnnny…" Larry slurred, his tongue hanging out to one side before he remembered to pull it back inside his mouth. He grinned, a big and sloppy expression of total joy. One quick look showed Don that the physicist's pupils were large enough for the Milky Way galaxy to pass through unhindered: drugged. Legally, thoroughly, completed looped. "Did Megan tell you what…what…" he trailed off, forgetting the rest of the question.

Okay, the man was living and breathing and clearly in no pain. The massive bandage around his hand suggested that more medical care lay ahead, but the alternative was far worse. The pair had been lucky, and Don was grateful. Don turned to Megan. "What happened?"

There was a light shining in Special Agent Reeves's eye. "We were mugged, Don. Three of them, dressed in black, masks over their faces. They stepped out of a dark alley as we walked by on our way to Nunzio's and threatened us with a couple of knives. Larry punched one in the face. He knocked him down."

"Really?" Don blinked. Larry Fleinhardt, pacifist? Larry Fleinhardt, noted for contemplating the mysteries of the stars and of life with equal fervor?

Colby too was amazed. "This is Larry Fleinhardt we're talkin' about here, right?"

"eeeeYup," Larry confirmed, drawing the word out with enthusiasm, waving his injured fist in the air before it got too heavy and landed back on the elevated pillows. "Knocked 'im flat on his ass. Showed him he'd better not mess with a physicizizist…" Larry nodded, and if the pillow hadn't been there to catch him, his head might have fallen off. "Newton's Law," he confided. "Or maybe Boyle's?"

"My hero." Megan stroked Larry's forehead. "He was magnificent."

"Ummm." Larry surrendered to the inevitable, closing his eyes, his good hand snugged into Megan's.

Don needed to know more. His agent and his consultant had just been the recipients of criminal activity, and the premier team of the Los Angeles division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not about to take this without some serious payback on the streets. "Report, Reeves. You got mugged?"

Megan went into field agent mode, although she refused to remove her hand from Larry's. "Three of them, all dressed in black. Suspect one: five foot ten, weight approximately one hundred fifty. Moved well, clearly knew martial arts. I suspect he's studied judo, although he had some moves that I've never seen before. I had my hands full with him. He was the one with the knife."

"Right." That explained why Larry had gotten in even one blow. Megan Reeves was an expert in Krav Maga, the style of Israeli martial arts that was part of what made the Mossad so feared on so many continents, but she had been tied up with the other muggers. "Number two?"

"Taller, maybe five foot eleven, not quite six foot. Also pretty skinny. I'd estimate his weight around one sixty, one seventy at most. Number three was small, probably five eight and weighing one forty. That was the one Larry knocked down, and once that happened, they ran. Don't put too much stock in my description, Don," Megan warned. "It was dark, and I was pretty busy trying to keep us from getting killed. Larry was magnificent," she repeated, beaming at the sleeping figure on the Emergency Room stretcher.

_True love_. Don glossed over that part and moved straight to the more agent-approved issues. "They get anything from you?"

Megan's face fell. "Only my pride, Don," she admitted. "I've got a couple of bruises, but they didn't even get my handbag. Larry's wallet is in that belongings bag there on the table; they didn't get that, either."

David was already poking through the contents. "You were lucky," was his observation. "Three of them, two of you? What if they'd been carrying?"

"That was what was going through my mind during the whole thing," Megan agreed. "I kept trying to take that guy down and move on to the other two, and he kept getting back up. It was frustrating."

_Frustrating_. Yeah, that was one word for it. _Damn lucky_ was another, never mind that it was two words and qualified as a whole phrase. Team Eppes was _damn lucky_ not to be putting in a want ad for another profiler and consultant. "Any connection to our current case?" he asked.

Megan shook her head. "If there is, then I'm not seeing it. Simple case of mugging, Don, unless we learn something to the contrary. Why? What are you thinking?"

Don tried not to bite his lip. "I'm thinking that someone slipped into Charlie's office earlier today and looked at his computer. He could have just as easily killed him. Megan, are you sure that those guys were just after money?"

Megan shook her head. "Like I said: things were moving pretty fast. I just assumed that they were after our wallets, and reacted. I don't think they had the opportunity to do anything else." She sighed. "I'm sorry, Don. If it was them, we could have had the entire case wrapped up."

"You also could have ended up on a slab in the morgue." Don wouldn't let the woman blame herself. He turned to his team. "I'm sure that LAPD has done all the processing of the scene that they intend to by now. You two go take a look. See if you can spot anything that might link the muggers to either this case or to anything else that Megan's worked on."

"We're on it, Don." David and Colby headed out.

Don turned back to Megan. "They going to keep Larry overnight?"

"With insurance the way it is?" Megan snorted. "No, they'll be discharging him any time now, with instruction for follow up with a hand surgeon. Nothing broken is what the doc said, but let's just say that I intend to teach him how to hit someone without damage to his own hand." A soft light came into her eyes once more. "But he _was_ magnificent."


	8. Three Researchers, Three Incidents

There were several emails waiting for Don when he walked into his cubicle the next morning and it lifted his spirits. This case was getting to him, he decided, because there was a distressing lack of useful clues. Oh, there was plenty of evidence—the remnants of several two-stage bombs and a mysterious dust made for a hell of a lot of evidence—but there was a significant lack of progress, and Don scanned his inbox looking for the missive from on high that would sarcastically inform him that getting his team's ass in gear would be a good way to avoid contributing to current unemployment rate.

Not that Don truly expected imminent termination. No, he and his would have to screw up pretty badly to get themselves tossed out, considering their current record of successes. It was just the Area Director's way of reminding him who was boss and what the boss expected so that the boss could continue to boast about the Los Angeles division's achievements on the boss's too frequent trips to Washington. Don appreciated the fact that the Area Director made those trips so that he could protect the rest of them from some of the foolishness coming out of Washington. Not all of the foolishness; no one was capable of preventing that. No, Don was satisfied that the AD prevented as much of fecal matter from rolling downhill as he could, and Don himself would go on to do his share to give the AD more boasting material.

All of which meant that Don needed to finish up this case, and do it soon. He opened up the first email.

It was from Charlie, and Don made a mental note to check on his brother. The man had been dosed with the powder yesterday afternoon and while no one knew of any long term effects, that didn't mean that there weren't any. The sole comfort that Don had was that he hadn't heard anything from their father, which meant that Charlie hadn't suffered any undue consequences through the night.

The email: Charlie had forwarded a description of the second suspect that he'd identified from the frames of the security cameras. Just height and weight: five foot eleven, one fifty pounds. Likely another male. Not much to go on, Don groused to himself. Still, it did rule out more than half of the L.A. population.

They now had two consistent suspects who had participated in all four crimes. Don wondered if those two were the 'masterminds' and the builders of the bomb. It was a decent hypothesis to work with. Don toyed around with some ideas. He could run the databases, looking for criminals who tended to work with explosives, and then see which ones fit the height and weight scenarios. It wasn't fancy and would require scut work on the computer, but it was a decent lead to pursue. Let's see, which agent would he assign that task to? Colby would shudder in fear, David would suck it up—Megan might appreciate a day indoors while her bruises faded. Charlie's information was good, solid detective work that would be followed by additional good, solid detective work that would eventually solve the case. Don appreciated that, even as he wished that something brilliant and earth-shattering would arrive in his inbox to send them all out to arrest the undeniably guilty party or parties.

Would this be it? Don opened the email from a contact in Washington, one of the people he'd consulted about the Deshwanee.

As much as he'd rather not, he had to hand it to their people in Washington. Those people knew how to collect data. There was a whole file of it, all references about the Deshwanee going all the way back to the 1800s. There was a large gap of history during the First and Second World Wars, and then the intel slowly started to creep back in.

There still wasn't any hard data that the Deshwanee was currently in existence. There was someone grabbed by the Indian version of the FBI back in the late 1960s, but the reports of the man didn't say whether the man's confessions had been independently verified. Don suspected not; the Western World wasn't paying much attention to India at that time, let alone receiving reports from unverified sources. There were a few tales of Kali-worshippers in some towns south of New Delhi, something about bringing a woman back from the dead after the birth of her third son. Those had been likewise dismissed. There hadn't been any reputable doctors present, and the stories implied that the midwife was simply incompetent, diagnosing that her patient had died and been revived in order to enhance her own reputation.

Here was something interesting: the email referenced some plant or other with the nearly incomprehensible name of _selaginella bryopteris_, a moss thing known locally as _sanjeevani_. The reference went on to talk about all sorts of miraculous properties for the stuff, treating everything from PMS to heat stroke, with a bunch of other fishing expeditions about waking people up from year-long comas. Okay, Don wasn't about to give credence to the stories, but it did offer a hint as to what one of the ingredients of the devil dust might be. With a few taps on the keyboard, Don forwarded the email to Gatsbacher.

Speaking of whom… Don scanned the inbox for something from the Fiend from Forensics. Nothing, and Don frowned. He would have thought that Gatsbacher would have communicated something, even if it was merely the required daily update to say, sorry, nothing earth-shattering yet. Have some patience. Maybe there'll be something by noon, or perhaps afternoon tea.

He sipped at the hot coffee in his hand, only now realizing that the brew was coming close to burning the flesh. Perfect; just the right temperature to wake him up.

Colby poked his head in. "Just heard from Megan. She'll be in late; she's taking Larry to his doctor's appointment. Apparently the hand surgeon did his undergraduate work with Larry before going to medical school, and slipped him in before regular hours as a way of saying thanks." Colby grinned. "Megan says that Larry's a hurtin' puppy with his hand. All the drugs have worn off, and he wants more."

"Let him have 'em," Don grunted. "He deserves 'em. He earned 'em," he added, and changed the subject. "You heard anything from Gatsbacher? I'll forward the email from Washington to you and David," he added, thinking that he should have done that earlier when he'd sent it off to the forensics lab rat. "There's not a heck of a lot more that we didn't already know, but there's a plant listed that may help Gatsbacher in identifying the dust."

"That's good," Colby told him. "Maybe we can use that to whittle down the list of suspects. Is it me, or are we not making good progress on this case?" he complained to the world. "You'd think that something would have broken loose by now." He sighed. "You want me to go downstairs and rattle Gatsbacher's cage?"

It was a magnanimous offer, to face Gatsbacher without back up, and further evidence of just how far from closure this case was. Don shook his head. "My job," he told Colby. "You and David; I want the both of you to start doing some computer work. There are two suspects that Charlie has identified for us from the crime scene security cams. Match them against computer lists of anyone in the area who likes to play with explosives."

"Computer work?" Colby scrunched up his face, and Don got the distinct impression that even facing Gatsbacher would be preferable for the field agent.

"Computer work," Don nodded, wondering if he could indeed switch jobs with Colby. Nope; it would seem like Don himself was afraid of Gatsbacher. Which he was, but letting his team know that there was something that Special Agent Don Eppes was afraid of would be letting them down. He was supposed to be hard-ass perfect, wasn't he?

Contrary to its usual behavior, the elevator took him downstairs without so much as a stop at the main lobby. Figured, Don groused to himself. Any other time, it would have stopped at every floor and waited longer than necessary for no one to get on or off. Don stepped out into the basement, feeling as though every stride was bringing him closer to his doom.

He cautiously pushed his way into the forensics lab, the portion that Gatsbacher had claimed for personal space. It smelled hideously; sulfur, Don thought. Putrefaction, dying stuff. Vile bubbles wove their way through black froth contained within glass beakers, emitting small popping sounds from where they sat next to the turned off Bunsen burners, still cooling off from the night before. There were papers on the desk, shiny under the lights that had turned on automatically with the beginning of the new day, and Don recognized the copy of the pawn shop ticket that Don and David had obtained just one day previously. Had Gatsbacher gotten to it? Only a bit: the lab rat had blown up the picture in order to concentrate on the signature but hadn't done anything else that Don could see.

There was something, however, that Don couldn't see: Gatsbacher. The lab was empty. There was no figure huddled over the computer, or in the corner of the room, cursing and snarling under fetid-smelling breath. There was no one slouching back and forth from machine to machine, flinging incomprehensible curses in every direction.

Gatsbacher was late to work? When was the last time that had happened? Six years ago? Gatsbacher was _never_ late. Gatsbacher considered it a civic duty to arrive early and leave late, so as to maximize the unhappiness to be spread throughout the organization.

Don headed to the lab next door, where some of Gatsbacher's fellow lab rats holed up. Gatsbacher had achieved a solitary lab by virtue of irredeemable behavior, but there was more than enough work for all. Don poked his head into the open door. "Hey, Andy. You seen Gatsbacher?"

Andy indicated the multi-colored breakfast sandwich sitting next to something that looked suspiciously dismembered. "Are you trying to upset my digestion, Eppes? Hell, no." Then Andy frowned, getting up off of his stool. "Isn't Gatsbacher here? Gatsbacher's always here before seven."

"Not this time." Don jerked his thumb toward the other lab. "Empty."

"Empty? That's crazy." Andy got himself up to look. "You're right, Eppes. Gatsbacher's not there." He sighed, and pulled out a drawer to leaf through the files. "Hang on. Got the phone number right here." He dialed, and held the phone slightly away from his ear so that Don could hear the obscenities on the other end that passed for Gatsbacher's cell phone voicemail message. Don really hoped that it wasn't a work-related number, or as an upstanding manager type of the FBI he'd have to report it to Human Resources. Andy spoke briefly into the phone. "Yo, Gatsbacher. If you're there, pick up. You're late, dude."

"No answer?"

"None. First time in years. If ever," Andy added, and then shrugged. "You got anything you need run real quick? I got a couple of minutes before Basehart comes looking for his stuff."

If Gatsbacher couldn't pull it off, then Don doubted that anyone else in forensics could either. There was a reason that Gatsbacher was known as the Fiend from Forensics, and it was only half due to behavior. "Thanks," he said easily, "but not this time. I'll just wait."

Don didn't like it. He wasn't the superstitious type, but this was more than coincidence. He totted up the incidents: Charlie had been dusted in his own office. No damage done, but that might have been Don's own fortuitous arrival before the intruder had had a chance to complete his mission. Then Larry had been mugged, along with Megan. That was more difficult to link to the two-stage bombs, but a couple of the muggers sounded like they were approximately the same size as the pair that Charlie had identified from the security cam frames.

Now this. Three researchers, three incidents. Don didn't like it one bit. Where the hell was Gatsbacher?

Could Gatsbacher have gone looking for clues anywhere else besides the lab? Probably not, but then again: this was Gatsbacher. Don poked his way through the papers on Gatsbacher's desk, looking for anything that might suggest why the researcher wasn't present. The copy of the paper that Don had brought back from the pawn shop caught his eye. Gatsbacher had transferred the sheet onto the computer, and the screen showed the efforts that had been taken to increase the contrast in order to pull up possibilities for the signature at the bottom of the page.

Some of it was easy for Don to make out: the first name began with a T, and the last name looked as though it started with a B. Okay, that might help. It would be one more parameter to feed into the computer search that he'd assigned David and Colby to, assuming that whoever it was hadn't fed the pawn shop owner a fake name. _Big assumption, Eppes_.

There wasn't anything here that Don could see that might send the lab rat scuttling for more information. Gatsbacher had access to some of the most extensive databases in the United States, which meant in the world. It wasn't likely that Gatsbacher would find additional hints in the surrounding Los Angeles area. If that were the case, then by protocols, Gatsbacher should have presented the request to Don himself, who would then assign a field agent or two to investigate.

Three researchers, three incidents. Don disliked coincidences, and this was becoming more anxiety-provoking by the minute. He came to a decision, and picked up the phone. "David? Don here. Listen, Gatsbacher never showed this morning, and there's stuff here in the lab that needs work."

"That's not like Gatsbacher," David said slowly, and it was clear that he was coming to the same conclusions that Don himself had. "Any call outs?"

"Not a one, and Gatsbacher isn't picking up." Don took a deep breath. "I don't like it, David. I think there's something here among the evidence that someone's afraid that we'll figure out." He handed out the orders. "Tell Colby to get to Charlie. Don't scare him, but tell Colby not to let Charlie out of his sight, not until I can arrange for some bodyguards. Have Colby bring Charlie into headquarters, unless he has some classes that he can't dump on some grad student. Let Megan know that she's just been assigned to Larry for the rest of the day, and then I'll see if I can persuade Charlie and Larry to hang out in the same office for a while. That should cut down the manpower drain."

"I take it you and I are going to find out what the home of Gatsbacher looks like?"

Don could hear the shudder in the field agent's voice. "You got it, David," he said grimly. "Let's hustle."


	9. No Going Home

Colby quietly slipped in at the back of the classroom and took a seat, ignoring the curious stares of some of the more easily distracted students. Charlie acknowledged his presence with a quick jerk of his head, not missing a beat with his lecture.

"For years," Charlie said, "it was thought that the computer wouldn't be able to beat man at chess. We're not talking about your average chess player, remember. We're talking about the world greats. When Big Blue beat Kasparov, the world of chess and computers went into something like shock, which leads us to this week's assignment." He grinned. "Take any of the classic chess openings, and describe it in mathematical terms. Bonus points if you use the one that Kasparov tried on Big Blue," he called out after the retreating backs. "It's in chapter fifteen, in your text." He waited for Colby to make his way through the students, swimming upstream. "Hey, Colby. You got something for me? Something turn up?"

Entirely too relaxed, Colby decided, to have heard about Larry and Colby decided on the spot to soft-pedal the news. "Case sounds like it's heating up," he told Charlie. "Don needs you back at the office."

Charlie glanced at the clock high up on the wall, and shook his head. "Right now? Can he wait? I've got another class in twenty minutes. Then I can be available for the rest of the day."

Colby nodded. Don had said 'bodyguard', but not to disrupt Charlie's schedule. Besides, once the perps saw that Charlie wasn't going to be left alone, they'd need to re-think their plan of attack. It was one thing to assault a lone man, and quite another to go for a group. Charlie had been alone in his office when the intruder had come sprinkling that damn devil dust stuff. Even though Larry hadn't been alone when he was attacked, the perps undoubtedly saw that he was accompanied by a tall and slender girl and hadn't known just how much trouble that girl could be. Colby grinned to himself; he too hadn't known how much trouble Megan could be until he'd teased her onto the mat one day. Colby was good—damn good—at hand-to-hand, but after getting dumped onto his tail three times in a row he was willing to admit that there was someone equally as good.

It was a good assumption that Gatsbacher had been alone, and that was the reason that the forensics scientist wasn't responding to messages. Gatsbacher was _always_ alone. That had most likely been the opportunity that the perps were waiting for, and they had used it. Don and David had gone out to Gatsbacher's home to see what they could find out. There was always the possibility that, after arriving early to work for six straight years without fail, Gatsbacher had overslept.

_Right_.

Colby would stick to Charlie like glue until relieved.

In the meantime, Charlie didn't know about Larry. He gathered up his books, dumping them into his backpack. "What's happening with the case?" he wanted to know. "Did Gatsbacher figure out what goes into that dust stuff?"

"Not exactly, although Washington suggests that there's some plant stuff that's reputed to be used," Colby improvised on the spot. _Crap, how did you tell someone that his best friend got mugged, and that he's likely next?_ "Charlie…"

"Yes, Colby?" Charlie looked up expectantly.

_You come right out and say it._ "Charlie, Larry got mugged last night. Him and Megan," Colby said, shifting his balance uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"What!" Charlie whipped around. "Is he all right? Is Megan okay? Where are they—"

"They're okay, Charlie," Colby hastened to tell him. "Larry's hand got a little messed up—"

"His hand?" Charlie was still ready to bolt.

"He's okay," Colby insisted, taking Charlie by the arm. "Calm down, Charlie. He's okay. So's Megan. She's with him right now."

"I have to go," Charlie mumbled, stuffing more papers into his backpack. "Which hospital is he in?"

Colby grinned inwardly. Worst was over. "He's not in any hospital, Charlie," he soothed.

"He's not? Why not? He's been injured—"

"They sent him home last night," Colby told him. "He's okay, Charlie. He's okay."

"He's okay?" The words were finally starting to penetrate.

"He's okay," Colby repeated firmly. "His hand is gonna be a little sore, but Megan was proud of him. Said that he fought back like a champ." Which was stretching the point, but what the heck? Wouldn't hurt. And Megan _was_ proud of the guy.

Charlie finished cleaning up the desk in the lecture room. "I'll dump the class," he said, refusing to meet Colby's eyes. "This is important. There must be something I can use from Larry and Megan's crime scene, something that will lead us to these perpetrators."

Colby took him by the arm once again. "It's okay, Charlie. Another hour or two isn't going to make a difference. Forensics is out there right now, processing the scene and looking for more evidence. They won't be finished for another couple of hours at least. You can teach your class, and then we'll head in. Okay?"

"But—"

"Okay?" Colby said it with more force, making it the answer for Charlie.

Charlie's shoulders slumped. "Okay." He lifted his eyes to Colby. "Larry's really okay?"

Colby remembered the wide-eyed and loopy stare that Larry had had the night before, hopped up on hospital-grade joy juice. "Trust me on this, Charlie. He's okay."

* * *

Gatsbacher's address surprised both Don and David. Each had expected Gatsbacher to have rented a small efficiency somewhere in the city, something easily accessible by public transportation. Forensic scientists, even top-notch ones, rarely made enough money to afford much more.

Then again, Don reflected, Gatsbacher rarely did the expected. Gatsbacher's address of record led them to a small and well cared for bungalow in one of the less expensive parts of the city. Don didn't know whether Gatsbacher rented or whether the lab rat had taken the plunge to own with a soul-stopping mortgage, and figured that at the moment it didn't matter.

There were azaleas out front, and David stopped to stare at the flowering bush. "I would never have associated Gatsbacher with azaleas," he muttered.

Don pointed to the door-knocker located prominently at eye level on the door. It was massive, and featured an ugly face with a long and ferociously ugly nose to use as a handle. "Now _that's_ all Gatsbacher." He glanced around, nerves rising. There was something _wrong_ going on here. He couldn't tell exactly what, but the hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up. "I'm not liking this, David. Something's wrong."

"Yeah." David's own instincts were agreeing with Don's, and he drew his weapon. "Door open?"

"Unlocked." _And it shouldn't be. No one leaves their door unlocked, not in the middle of L.A. Not even Gatsbacher._ Don's own handgun arrived in his hand without him consciously drawing it. He nudged the door open.

The door swung open, the hinges declining to squeak. Both Don and David listened intently for any noise, anything to suggest that the home was occupied.

The foyer opened into a small and cozy living space, with overstuffed chairs in a rough circle. There was a fairly small flat screen TV on one wall, and an equally as large screen hooked up to an elaborate computer set up on the desk opposite. The coffee table was piled high with scientific journals mixed in with current events, not all of which were in English.

In the middle of it all was a body, a very skinny body with long and greasy black hair. There was blood all around, leaking from a gaping wound in the side, blood already darkening into a maroon stain on the torn jeans. The body wasn't moving.

_Crap_. Don didn't utter a word. There was too great a chance of the assailant remaining on the premises. He and David advanced, step-wise, clearing each spot before moving forward.

"Clear." David poked his head into the final room. "Don?"

"It's Gatsbacher." Don knelt beside the body, feeling for a pulse.

"Is he—?" David couldn't finish the question, and the gender definition slid out ahead of accuracy. This was one of their own, spilling life-blood onto the rug.

"Took you long enough, Eppes," Gatsbacher croaked.

"Shit!" Don all but leaped up. "Gatsbacher!"

"Yeah." Gatsbacher coughed, and blood sprang to the pale lips. Gatsbacher licked them. "Pay attention, Eppes. I ain't got much time."

"Call for an ambulance, David," Don ordered. How had the Fiend from Forensics held on this long? Anything the researcher said was going to be a death bed statement. Don had seen enough dying bodies to know that for certain, but he still had to try. "Tell them to make it a rush job."

Gatsbacher coughed again, weakly. "Don't bother, Eppes. Just listen."

"You see them, Gatsbacher? You see who did this?"

"Nope." Not even enough energy this time for another cough. It rattled in the back of the forensic researcher's throat. "They wore black masks, like the bank job and shit. Whoever it was used the damn dust. Blew it into my face. Woke up like…this…" The eyes closed.

"Gatsbacher!"

Gatsbacher summoned up one last burst of strength. "Five foot ten. One hundred fifty-five pounds, give or take three. Suspect two: five foot eleven, just shy of one fifty..." Cough. Gasp for breath. "Suspect three…shorter…stayed in…the…background…"

Gone. Don could see the light fade from the pale eyes, the mouth hang slackly open. "Gatsbacher!" he snarled. "Dammit, don't die on me! You've still got this damn case to solve!"

He could hear the siren approaching, knew that the ambulance would arrive in less than sixty seconds, and knew that it wouldn't be good enough.

The case had claimed a second victim, and this one wasn't accidental.

* * *

No one was talking in anything more than monosyllabic phrases. Gatsbacher hadn't been the most pleasant employee of the Los Angeles FBI, but the researcher had still been one of them. Every agent there was out for blood. Charlie's brother suddenly had more help than he knew what to do with, and his biggest problem was keeping them under control. If Don had told them to go out and haul in every known suspect in the entire Los Angeles county, they would have done it on the spot. If he'd have thought that it would solve the case, Don would have let them.

_Angry_. Charlie had seen Don angry on many different occasions and frequently when that anger had been directed at an obnoxious little brother, but this was different. This was a sullen, burning fury that made a lava pit seem tame by comparison. Every footstep, every gesture, every tap onto the computer keyboard spelling out the details of the demise of Terry Gatsbacher, was laced with internal rage.

It wasn't just his brother, Charlie decided grimly. It was David, and Colby—even Megan didn't seem able to do more than snap at him—and all the other agents in the building felt the same way. They had lost one of their own—not even a field agent—and they were determined that whoever it was would not get away with it.

As for himself, Charlie wasn't at all certain what he was feeling. Anger, certainly: Gatsbacher had been a first-class researcher and while the disagreeable attitudes were difficult to take, the knowledge that the forensics scientist had brought to the table was well reasoned and intellectually sound. The loss to the scientific community would be profound.

There was more, and Charlie had only realized it—_really_ understood it—when he'd asked to go back to his office to work on the loaner laptop that he'd gotten from the IT department at CalSci. Don had turned such a look of fury upon him that Charlie had quailed. It was then that Charlie learned that his brother and everyone else at the FBI believed that both Charlie and Larry were in imminent danger and that one or both were in possession of some vital clue. There would be no going home tonight, not until this matter was resolved.

He should have realized it well before this, Charlie thought. He should have understood the gravity of the situation when, as he and Colby were leaving the class that Charlie had finished teaching, Colby had gotten a call from David. Colby's face has gone rigid, and then the field agent had closed up the cell, thrown Charlie into the car and driven straight back to FBI headquarters without so much as a quick stop at Charlie's office to pick up any of the work. Charlie had misinterpreted it as a hot lead that needed immediate mathematical follow up. Well, it was, but that wasn't the reason for Colby's haste.

Larry too was quietly shaking, his arm in a sling and his hand wrapped in a multitude of white bandages. He told a similar story about Megan, that the pair had been relaxing in her apartment, discussing some of the ramifications of one galaxy impinging upon another. One phone call later and he was dizzily speeding along the L.A. streets in her car, clutching his vials of medications in his good hand.

It was frightening. Every agent in the FBI building would stare hungrily at the pair of them, certain that one or both had the answer to this case that would allow them to lay their forensic brother—or sister—whichever—to rest. There was a reason that the group of Deshwanee or the group borrowing their name had targeted the three researchers, and the agents of the FBI were determined to prevent that lead from being lost forever.

Charlie heartily approved.

Larry looked pale, and Charlie realized that the drugs he had been given were doing very little good at the moment. The physicist wasn't stopping, however. "The answer, Charles, is somewhere within our grasp," he said, deliberately calm. "Our task is to find it. Once we have done that, this nightmare will be well on its way to being over."

Charlie swallowed hard, and steeled himself to match his friend's demeanor. _This is a research problem,_ he told himself. _The key is to find the clue to the answer. One of us has it_.

_Talk it out_. Charlie glanced over to where Don was conferring with his team and others, voices hushed with anger. "We were each working on different aspects of this case," he made himself say. "You were researching the actual two stage bomb, as well as the Deshwanee."

"Not completely accurate, Charles," Larry interrupted. "Our lines of thought were irretrievably intertwined. The bomb design was simplistic in nature, and one that any reasonably competent explosives expert could have reproduced in a heartbeat. I doubt that we will find our answer there."

"Likewise, the Deshwanee," Charlie sighed. "All three of us were working that aspect. You supplied the initial link, and I interviewed Dr. Ramghava, and even Don pulled in additional details from Washington."

"Tempting though it might be to ascribe this masterpiece of horror to the long dead cult, I would propose that the Deshwanee line of thought may be a blind alley," Larry said thoughtfully. "Don too has done inquiries into that aspect, yet he so far does not seem to have been targeted for malicious activity."

"What are you saying?" It was more to keep Larry talking rather than any real information. Some of their best collaborations had come from exactly that technique of brainstorming, Charlie knew.

Larry settled a bit deeper onto the sofa in the conference room where he and Charlie had been deposited. The room contained a glass wall, so that the field agents stalking by could glance in and make sure that no mysterious figure resurrected from the past centuries had slipped in to finish off the last two researchers. "Let's look at the evidence," he said, raising his good hand so that he could tick off the points. "One: there has been no credible evidence of this cult for more than one hundred years. They are little known even in their country of origin, so little known that one must seek out experts in Indian history in order to obtain the most meager elements of knowledge."

"Dr. Ramghava," Charlie nodded. "Even she went to her grad student. What was his name? Ted?"

Larry nodded. "That was the young man in question. He too was careful to preface the majority of his remarks with caveats about accuracy, again due to the lack of verifiable knowledge. Likewise, the monks couldn't tell me with any degree of certainty that the cult was currently extent. Their knowledge for the last several decades was based on hearsay and legend, neither of which is exceptionally helpful for our present circumstances."

"However," and Charlie held up a cautionary finger, "we have that dust that was placed into the two stage bomb. We can agree that the purpose of the bomb was to disseminate the dust throughout a contained area such as a store or bank, and that the dust has the effect of essentially 'freezing' everyone for a short period of time."

Larry bobbed his head. "Agreed, Charles. We have clear and present data to that effect."

"Additionally, we can agree that the effects of the dust are reasonably similar to the legends of the potions ascribed to the Deshwanee." Charlie completed the link between the clues and moved forward. "Lastly, we have two figures, clad only in dark clothing and black masks, that we can hypothesize are the same in each of the crimes," Charlie mused. "Do these two hire additional help when they feel the need?"

"And who are those two?" Don asked grimly, walking in on them. Charlie hated the lines in his brother's face, the deep crevices that told of the strain. "You got any thoughts for me, either of you? Anything I can work with?" It was a demand. It was a quiet plea.

Larry blinked, and Charlie realized that his friend and mentor was having trouble keeping his eyes open under the influence of his prescribed medications. Larry opened his mouth. "I wish I could say yes, Don."

Charlie was determined. "Let's keep talking it out. Don, stay here and help. What else have you learned about the Deshwanee? Anything at all?"

Don frowned. "Washington says that the tales of their existence are more commonplace in the southern regions of India rather than the north. There was a ruby that they were reputed to have stolen, back in the mid-1800s—"

"Not old stuff," Charlie interrupted. "Anything recent? Even if it's not from a reliable source…" He trailed off, thinking.

"Charles?"

The thought emerged. "Dr. Ramghava's grad student. He's the one who knows the most about them. He would be a good source of information, Don. Let's go talk to him." Charlie started to get up.

"Hold on, buddy." Don stopped his brother with an upraised hand. "You're not going anywhere, Charlie, and certainly not without a bodyguard. We'll bring this guy to you, and Professor Ramghava as well. What's his name?" He headed for the door.

"Ted. Ted Belkins," Charlie said. "I have his contact information in my card files, on my desk at school. I can tell you exactly where it is—"

Don spun around to face Charlie. "What was his name?"

"Ted Belkins."

"He was the guy that you and Larry talked to, right after someone dusted you in your office, right?"

"That's right." Charlie didn't know where Don was going with this, but he was willing to trust his brother.

"How tall would you say this Ted Belkins is?" Don demanded.

Charlie tried to think. "A little taller than me, by a couple of inches. Not six feet tall."

"More like five foot ten." Don was lost in thought. Then—"wait here." The SAC team leader dashed out of the lounge area.

Don was back within seconds, a piece of paper clutched in his grasp. "Look at this," he insisted. "Whose signature does this look like?"

Charlie squinted at it. "Don, it's pretty illegible. I see a 'T' and a bunch of squiggly lines."

"You mean that it's worse than your signature." It was a joke, but the humor never made it to Don's eyes.

"Could be 'Theodore'." David walked in on Don's heels, having seen his boss moving rapidly, and over his shoulder at the paper. "Maybe 'Thomas', but a little long for that. You got something?"

"Maybe." Don settled himself down, and Charlie recognized the maneuver. He'd seen it hundreds of times, when Don was called on to bat clean up. It would be the make or break play of the game: the team would win or lose based on Don's performance. It was the sign that his brother was moving into high gear. It was the sign of an impending home run.

It would be the same here, only this game was being played for higher stakes. Don would be batting clean up on this inning. He would make the correct call, based on nothing more than gut feelings—certainly not based on anything so mundane as math.

"We can't pull him in for something as flimsy as this." Don was doing his thinking out loud. "And if we move too fast, we spook him." He looked up. "I want the book on him, David. See how many parking tickets he has, where he's from, that sort of thing. Go."

"Going." David vanished out to the bull pen.

"And you two." Don turned back to his consultants—and stopped. "Larry, you're beat."

"I am not." It would have more convincing if Larry had said it with his eyes open.

"Right." Don wasn't having any of it. "Sack out right here. I'll make sure that no one disturbs you. Charlie, you've still got the rest of that security camera stuff to finish, right?"

"Yes—" Charlie broke off.

"Charlie?"

Charlie remembered something. "Don, I need the other laptop in my office, the loaner from the IT department."

"Your own, and access to several million dollars worth of FBI equipment isn't good enough?"

Charlie flushed. "No. I mean, it is, but it's what's on the loaner that I need." He hurried on. "There's additional data points on the loaner that I need to input for the identification algorithm…" He trailed off, hoping Don would back away from the possibility of being swamped with mathematical lingo.

He had to give his brother credit. The man tried to comprehend. "Can't you pull it off from here? I mean, through the Internet? I've seen you work other computers that way, and you are not leaving this building, buddy. Not until we wrap this thing."

"Remote in? Not in this case." Wow. Don had actually listened to things that Charlie had said. "I wish it was that easy. I can't do that without someone at the loaner laptop to open up the protocols, and even then it would mean figuring out how to work through both the FBI and CalSci firewalls to get to what I need. It would mean an extra few hours of time."

"Okay…" End of lecture. Don grimaced. "I suppose this means that you want me to swing by and pick it up."

"Or, I could just go there and—"

"Not a chance, Charlie." Don seized on that piece, the part that he understood and didn't like. "You're staying here, in the middle of a bunch of well-armed FBI types, until we clear this up. Got it?"

"Don—"

"Got it?" Don wasn't taking no for an answer.

Larry, however, had his own answer: he snored.

Charlie looked at his friend, and sighed. "Got it."


	10. Closing In

"The guy's clean, Don," Colby reported, looking up from his computer screen. "Theodore R. Belkins, graduate student in Indian History at CalSci. The 'R' stands for Robert. Birthplace: New York, some little town upstate in the sticks, with more cows than people. Did his undergraduate at one of the state colleges and did well enough to get admitted to CalSci for graduate school. No federal crimes, and the local data banks are coming up clean. He had a parking ticket three years ago, and paid it off without a problem. But, Don, listen to this: he minored in chemistry as an undergrad. With that background, he'd know how to make things go boom."

"How about his financials?"

"We can't do much without a court order, but what we've found says that he's nothing more than what he claims. Doesn't have much money, and he's taking out loans for school. Works weekends at a nursing home in the kitchen to make ends meet." David looked up. "I can swing by his place and check it out, make sure that he's not hiding high-end art in his back yard."

"You do that." It wasn't looking good for the FBI. Don—and everyone else in the bullpen—_wanted_ Ted Belkins to be dirty. Where was he hiding the stolen goods? Was he hanging on to them for things to cool down? It was a possibility. It was a _smart_ possibility.

It was Megan who came through, and not in the direction that anyone had expected. "Don." She had _that_ note in her voice, the one that said _you'd better listen to this_.

"Megan?"

Megan had her response ready. "Don, I was looking through the list of locals who had ordered titanium tetrachloride. We were looking for anyone who stood out as not having a legitimate reason for ordering it. The majority are teachers, and similar; people who would use small amounts in demonstrations." She forced a smile. "I even found Charlie's name on here, and Larry's."

Don could see that. It made sense. Both professors liked demonstrations, the noisier the better.

Megan kept going. "I found another CalSci professor's name on here, and we all skipped right by because it makes sense for professors at a high-end university specializing in the hard sciences to use titanium tetrachloride. But this professor doesn't teach physics, or chemistry, or even math."

It clicked. "Charlie's Indian connection? What was her name?"

"Indira Ramghava," Megan supplied.

Bingo! "Time to have a chat with Professor Ramghava," Don said, knowing that every agent in the room was mutely begging to back him up. He awarded the prize. "Let's find out why a professor of history is ordering bomb-making supplies. Megan, you're with me." After all, the profiler had been the one to pick up on the lead. Now: consolation prize. "David, you hit Charlie's office and pick up the loaner laptop he's asking for."

"Will do, Don." David grabbed his jacket and was gone before Don could change his mind and chain him back to a desk.

Colby begged with his eyes. "Me, Don?" _Don't leave me behind_.

"Sorry, Colby. I need someone to do a background check on Professor Ramghava, and you're already into the databases." Don tried to make amends. "Call it in to me as soon as you get something. I'll give you more instructions after that." _If I can think of a way to get you out from behind a desk, I will._

Colby sighed. "Right."

* * *

Professor Indira Ramghava's office was significantly smaller than Charlie's, but looked larger due to the lack of clutter. That wasn't to say that it didn't have its share of knick-knacks, but each piece had been far more carefully selected and arranged to present a cocoon of serenity. Don could feel Megan almost relax as they walked in. The colors, bright and vibrant, flowed together to present a rainbow to please the eye, and the desk that the professor sat behind seemed to all but grow from the floor.

Professor Ramghava herself was a tiny woman, and clearly of Indian heritage. She kept to the Indian style of dress, her sari a brilliant pink and green over a trim waistline. Her dark hair, shot through with gray, suggested that she was in her fifth, possibly her sixth, decade of life. Colby would have the details on her age soon, Don knew, and dismissed the thought. At the moment the woman's age wasn't pertinent and, in any case, at something around five feet tall she really didn't fit the height and weight profile of the two suspects that Charlie had given them. What they needed now were answers to several important questions.

"Agent Eppes," she greeted him. "Agent Reeves. I recently met your brother, Agent Eppes, for the first time. A remarkable man, I must say."

"Thank you." Don forced himself not to rush. He'd heard that line too many times before, even had a few casual acquaintances try to get to Charlie through him. It had never worked, especially not when he lived and worked in another part of the country. He kept the discussion on track. "Professor Ramghava," he said, having decided on his approach, "we're here on official business. I believe my brother mentioned that we are working on a case with ties—"

"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "The Deshwanee. I'm afraid that I wasn't very much help to him. I'll offer whatever I can to you, of course, as I did to him. The Deshwanee were a secretive group and left very little hard evidence behind. Most of what we believe is based on legend and conjecture. Is he all right?"

Megan pounced. "What makes you say that?"

Professor Ramghava favored her with a understanding look. "My graduate student was in the crowd the other day, Agent Reeves. He told me about it, about speaking with Professors Eppes and Fleinhardt. I'm going to assume that he's fine, or Ted would have said something."

Not going to shake anything loose that way. So far the woman was behaving like a complete innocent, and why wouldn't she? Don mentally chastised himself; there were times when his suspicious nature tried to work overtime. He sighed, thinking about the occupational hazards of the job. Next he'd be suspecting his own father. Don pulled himself back to the case and dove into the topic at hand. "Professor Ramghava, we found an odd purchase with your name on it. Your name came up as having purchased some titanium tetrachloride. Care to explain?"

Professor Ramghava frowned. "I'm afraid you have me confused with someone else, Agent Eppes. I have no idea what you're talking about. What is this titanium tetra…?"

Megan cleared it up for her. "Titanium tetrachloride was used to make several bombs that were found at crime scenes. _You_ are listed as having purchased a large enough quantity to have built those bombs. Tell me, professor: why would someone interested in Indian history purchase bomb-making materials?"

The professor began to get nervous. "But I didn't, Agent Reeves. I didn't purchase anything to make bombs. I don't know where you got your information, but it's wrong. Are you accusing me?"

"Not yet." Megan kept the threat palpable. "How would you explain the fact that your name is listed as having purchased titanium tetrachloride, professor?"

"But I didn't," Professor Ramghava repeated, her voice rising. "I don't know anything about bombs, and I didn't purchase any of that titanium whatever!" She spread her hands. "Search my office! Search my home! Go ahead; I give you all the permission that you want! Go!"

"That won't be necessary, professor," Don told her. It wouldn't; anyone voluntarily suggesting that the FBI conduct a search was either innocent as the driven snow or had hidden the goods somewhere else, and a sixty-something year old professor of Indian History wasn't a likely candidate for the three crimes that the FBI was investigating. "However, we would like permission to trace the purchase back through your credit card. Do you have the card with you?"

"Which one? I have several." Not mollified, and not yet calmed down. Still scared. Don could see it in the shaking of the woman's hands. He didn't blame her. It wasn't every day that the FBI came to ask about bombs. Don's suspicions would have been aroused if she hadn't been concerned. _Damned if you do, damned if you don't; is that it, Eppes?_

Megan read off the number. Professor Ramghava hastily pulled open one of the drawers to her desk, pulling out her wallet and leafing frantically through the plastic. She looked up, alarm great in her eyes. "It's not here."

"It's missing?" Don leaned over to look.

"It's the one that I keep for school purchases, to claim for tax deductions." The woman was babbling, and both FBI agents knew it. "It makes it easier to separate things for taxes. I keep it all on this one card, and I can't find it. I must have misplaced it somewhere." Professor Ramghava dove into the drawer, clearly hoping that the small piece of plastic was somewhere hidden in the depths, that it had dropped out accidentally.

Don and Megan knew better. "Who else has access to your office, professor?" Megan asked gently.

"Many people. Many people," she repeated. "Ted Belkins, my graduate student. Students from my classes come often, and at any time. I encourage them to come and discuss what they have learned."

"Cleaning people," Don mused.

"Yes, yes! Them as well!"

"Do they know where you keep your credit cards?"

"No! No, of course not! I keep them safe…" Professor Ramghava grew a thoughtful expression. "Maybe…"

"You think?" Megan leaned forward.

The woman looked up at her, the worry evident. "I may have put the card back in front of some of my students," she admitted.

"Which ones?"

Professor Ramghava shrugged her shoulders, trying and failing to appear nonchalant. "I'm not sure. It could have been several of them. I don't know."

Don came to a decision. "I need you to come to FBI headquarters, Professor Ramghava," he announced.

"Why?" The question was almost squeaked. "Am I being arrested? Shall I call a lawyer?"

"No," he hastened to reassure her. "No, right now we need your help. Your credit card is missing, and it may have been used to purchase items used in the commission of a crime. We need to go through the recent purchases with you, see if there's anything else that you don't recognize. We can do that best at headquarters. By the way," he added, changing the subject, "where is Ted Belkins right now?"

"Ted? I'm not sure. Why do you want to know? Possibly in the library…"

Don would put out an APB on the man; it was time. The graduate student was an expert on the Deshwanee, he had access to the credit card used in the purchase of titanium tetrachloride, and—most importantly—he was the same height and weight as one of the figures in the security camera frames.

The FBI was closing in.

* * *

"Don." Charlie looked up from the second laptop perched on the desk, and Don realized that David had already done his delivery of the loaner. "Don, I—"

"Need you to do something for me, buddy," Don interrupted. "I need a photo of Ted Belkins, fast. Can you get into the CalSci database and pull it out? If I try to get through the L.A. motor vehicles, it'll take all day."

"Sure. It won't take a moment. But—"

"Rush job, Charlie. This may be our guy."

"Ted? Don, he's a grad student in history—"

"With access to Deshwanee techniques, more than anyone," Don interrupted yet again. Seconds counted. He'd already unleashed a flood of field agents to the CalSci vicinity to look for Belkins, and a photo would go a long way toward a rapid recovery. "Some of the most notorious crime figures were described as great neighbors. They never fouled their nest. We're bringing him in, before he can run."

"But—"

"If he's innocent, we'll figure that out, too." Don put his hand onto Charlie's shoulder. "This one's for Gatsbacher, Chuck." He tightened his fingers. "We look after our own. And that means you and Larry, too, Charlie," he added, obliquely reminding Charlie that the two professors were safely here in FBI headquarters not just to provide valuable statistical clues.

Megan walked in on them. "The results from Belkins's cell phone records are in. He made the purchase over the phone for the titanium tetrachloride about a month ago. There's a call listed on the records to the supply company."

"Smoking gun," Don nodded grimly. "Where's Larry?"

"I put him in my office," she let them know. "He was sleeping before I finished tucking him in. He'll be better off out of the way, since you're saying that you can't use him right now, Charlie, and the drugs are knocking him out."

"He find anything in Gatsbacher's lab?"

"Not a thing," Megan sighed. "I think we're going to have to call in additional help to get anything else out of there. The bomb parts Larry identified easily, but the dust is still a mystery. Larry's a physicist, and most of what Gatsbacher was focusing on was chemistry."

"Organic chemistry," Charlie put in. "You want me to tap my resources at CalSci? I think that Georgi Strubyi is at a conference, but I can see if some of his grad students are available."

"You do that, Charlie." Don accepted the offer gratefully. "The photo?"

Charlie finished tapping the keyboard. "It should be coming through the printer now."

"Thanks, buddy." Don started to dash away.

"Don—"

"What?" Don grabbed up the photo from the printer outside of his office. Yeah, it was the kid—man—that Charlie had pulled out of the crowd that day after an intruder dusted Charlie's office. That had been so close! Charlie had been entirely out of it, not responding to anything, when Don walked in. It would have been incredibly easy for someone to put a bullet between Charlie's eyes. They were lucky that Don decided not to wait, and to walk up the steps to Charlie's office. In fact, considering that this Ted Belkins had been outside with the crowd, watching the circus…Motive: a hell of a lot of cash. Opportunity: he was in the area, and he had access to Professor Ramghava's credit card. More and more, Ted Belkins was looking like their man. All they needed to put this case to bed was to find some of that devil dust on Mr. Belkins, and for that they needed the man himself.

"Don, I think someone played around with my program, the one to identify the figures," Charlie called out, determined to be heard.

Don looked up from the photo. "Are you saying that the two suspects aren't the height and weight that you gave me?" That would be a set back, but not devastating. Ted Belkins was involved, according to other evidence. Charlie's identifications were pointing in the right direction, but not enough to take to court.

"No. No, not that. I double-checked that stuff, and that's rock solid. But there's something else."

"What?" Don was running out of time. Belkins could be escaping right now, packing his bags for a quick trip to India and his little Deshwanee friends--assuming that the Deshwanee really existed.

"That's just it; I'm not sure. That's why I needed the loaner laptop, so that I could check—"

Don had other priorities at the moment and 'I'm not sure' wasn't something that he could do anything about. "Okay, Chuck; you keep working on it, and when you figure it out, let me know. Listen, I gotta get this photo to the field agents. I'll be right back," he lied. Anything to get moving. Sure, his brother was long-winded but the real reason was that there was a murder suspect to apprehend.

* * *

This was going to be tricky. David had spotted Ted Belkins in one of the smaller areas of the library, pouring away at a dusty tome, but he had surrounded himself with at least a dozen or more students. This was a man who had set off more than one bomb, and until Don and his team knew that there wasn't any danger of him blowing up the place they needed to take it slow. The man had a backpack with him and every member of the FBI had a pretty clear idea of what that pack could potentially hold.

Don would handle this suspect himself. The rest of the operation would be a team approach, and he started them on it. One by one, David, Colby, and Megan quietly removed the bystanders from the scene.

They couldn't get to everyone, not without alerting the suspect. They would have to do the best that they could, and hope that Belkins didn't try anything stupid.

Don loosened the handgun in his holster, devoutly hoping that he wouldn't need it. He wouldn't pull it, not yet. Not unless Belkins forced him. With all these students around, he wanted to keep this under control.

It was time. He nodded to his team, and to the additional field agents that had volunteered to help. Each bystander had been assigned to an agent, and in moments each had someone standing nonchalantly by, ready to take the student down behind a stack of books for cover.

Don walked up to Belkins and tapped him on the shoulder.

This was it. "Theodore Belkins?"

Ted looked up, pulling himself out of the book he was reading. He recognized the man accosting him. "Agent Eppes?" He blinked.

Don kept his voice down. "You need to come with me."

Ted blinked again. "Okay." He started to get up, grabbing his backpack. "Professor Eppes have some more questions for me?"

"Something like that." Was Belkins going to make this easy? Was he really that clueless, that he was busted? Don would wait until they got outside and safely into his vehicle before saying that. The man might run, once in the open air. Don scanned Belkins's clothing, looking for any suspicious bulge that might suggest a weapon, and couldn't find one. It was the backpack, though, that had Don most nervous. There could be anything in there.

More agents closed in, forming a small mob with Belkins in the center. Belkins looked around himself uneasily, noting the grim expressions on the various agents. "What's going on? Am I in trouble?"

"Let's just say that we have a few questions for you."

"Like?"

"We'll wait until we get to FBI Headquarters."

Belkins started to shake. "I want a lawyer."

"What do you need a lawyer for?" Colby growled. "You got something to hide?" He neatly plucked the backpack out of Belkins's hand, and Don could feel the relief ease out of every agent present.

More shaking. Belkins tried to back away and couldn't; the library table was in the way. There was no place to run. "I'm not saying anything until I have legal counsel."

"Fine. You'll get your one phone call when we get to Headquarters. In the meantime, hand over your phone." Don held out his hand.

"My phone? I need that to call a lawyer—"

"You'll use the phone at Headquarters," Don interrupted. "In the meantime, hand it over. It's evidence."


	11. End Game

Charlie watched the procession walk past Don's office where Charlie was working, watched more than enough FBI field agents grimly escort Ted Belkins toward the Interrogation Rooms. The graduate student saw Charlie, too, and the look in the kid's eye was one that stabbed Charlie to the quick. It was the look of a student who had just flunked an exam not because he hadn't studied but because he simply didn't have the talent to keep up. It was the look of someone who had run into a brick wall and the bricks were crashing down on him.

Ted Belkins was terrified.

The worst thing was that there wasn't a damn thing that Charlie could do about it. He'd gotten the kid involved in this, he was the one who had chatted with Ted for an hour or two about the Deshwanee—wait a minute. This wasn't because of Charlie. This wasn't because the FBI consultant had gone to a noted professor of Indian history and met her grad student. If Don had pulled Ted Belkins in for questioning, it was because Don had hard evidence. Don had leads such as that titanium tetrachloride purchase that had led him to Ted Belkins, and the fact that Ted matched the height and weight of one of the suspects in Charlie's analysis, and there was probably more evidence that Don hadn't yet shared with him. Charlie could hear Don's voice in his head: _not everything in the world happens because of you, Chuck. The rest of us morons come in for our share_. Sure, the voice was of a twelve-year-old Don, but that didn't make it any less loud in his head.

Charlie shook his head, figuratively dusting away the cobwebs of guilt. There was still more work to be done, work that only he could do. Obtaining the loaner laptop from his office was only the first step.

His program to identify the general characteristics of the perpetrators of the four crimes was still on track after the intruder had come into Charlie's office and sprayed the Deshwanee dust over everything. Immediately afterward Charlie had examined his laptop and had determined that the program had not been erased. He and everyone had assumed that either the programming was not what the intruder was after or that the intruder had been interrupted by Don's arrival before he could do anything.

That assumption, Charlie was coming to realize, was in error. The original programming was spitting back two suspects that participated in every crime—and Charlie remembered that the initial results had suggested _three_. At first he simply thought that he'd remembered incorrectly. It didn't happen often, but it did happen. It could also have been that further number-crunching had ruled out the third suspect.

That wasn't the reason. By obtaining the loaner laptop, one fresh from the IT department and untouched by any intruder, Charlie had downloaded his program and data points from the back up drive on the mainframe at CalSci, and he was reasonably certain that those data points hadn't been touched by the intruder. Charlie had made use of that fact to re-exam the results.

He didn't like what he saw. There was indeed a third suspect. The height and weight of the suspect wasn't yet available to him, but it would only be a matter of time. Perhaps it would take only another hour, during which time Don and the others would finish with Ted and then Charlie would be able to share his findings with his older brother. The case would be over soon, and then Charlie and Larry could safely return home and back to their own work.

Professor Ramghava too would be able to return home, and Charlie didn't like the feeling of guilt that he had whenever he looked at her sitting across from David in the bull pen as the field agent worked to pull up a list of purchases on her credit card. Charlie had gotten her involved in this case, and now she had been pulled away from her research and into the sordid underworld. She and David would go through that transaction list to determine which purchases she didn't remember in the hopes that it would provide further evidence to nail Belkins for the crimes. Once they had him positively identified, it would lead to the identification and apprehension of the others who had participated in the robberies. This was the end game of the case, the cleaning up of details.

It didn't seem right, that a student at CalSci should do this. These were the best and the brightest of young men and women, with the most to live for. It just wasn't _right_.

Well, there were a lot of things that weren't right with the world, and this one sucked, to put it into the vernacular. The best that Charlie could do would be to help Don put this one away and move on.

The laptop _pinged_, and Charlie looked back at the screen, morosely pleased. The results were in.

A perfume tickled his nose, and he rubbed it irritably before tapping the keys that would reveal the statistics he was after. There it was, the results on suspect number three, the one that had been deleted by the intruder in Charlie's office: height, five foot one. Short, then, and small; only slightly over one hundred pounds. That was more than short. Tiny was a better word; maybe petite. That would eliminate a lot of suspects, and make it easy for Don. Yeah, this was an important piece of evidence. Don would get it as soon as he emerged from the interrogation room. Charlie would see to that.

Who was connected with the case who was that tiny? There could be a lot of suspects that Don and his team had met that Charlie hadn't interacted with. Not all of the people that they'd questioned were identified by height and weight in the reports, so the only way for Charlie to go forward would be for the field agents to leaf through the files and try to remember the characteristics of the people they'd talked to.

Charlie frowned; there _was_ one person that he knew that was that tiny: Professor Indira Ramghava. But she was older and successful; she didn't have a motive that he could see, and she claimed not to know anything about the devil dust, as Don insisted on calling the stuff—he sneezed, and the perfume aroma became stronger.

There was a sudden hand on his shoulder, and he looked up: it was Professor Ramghava herself, as if summoned by Charlie's thoughts. She had an odd expression on her face, almost sorrowful. Behind her, David and everyone else seemed frozen in time. Not one person moved. _That's odd…_

A sharp pain lanced through his gut, a pain so great that it took his breath away.

"I'm sorry, Professor Eppes, that it had to turn out this way. I wish you hadn't realized that your computer had been tampered with."

_I completely agree_, Charlie wanted to tell her. Instead, the pain swarmed over him like a cloud of angry bees until the darkening blackness claimed all of his thinking.

* * *

Interrogation Room Two was cold and uninviting. The cinder block walls were painted a color best described as nonexistent, and the only window was a one-way pane of glass that neither of them could see through. The suspect sat in the flimsy wooden chair, more because his legs wouldn't support him if he stood than for any other reason. Don also appreciated being able to look down on the man from above. It tended to help with that 'got you' sensation that led to the breaking of nerves and a confession. Don crossed behind the suspect. The confession was on its way.

"Sure, you can wait for your lawyer," Don said, trying to sound reasonable, "but innocent people try to cooperate with the FBI. They don't wait for a lawyer that they've never even met. All we want are answers, and we want the murderer. If that's not you, then you need to be helping us to clear you. It's your choice. You can tell me to leave this room right now, and I'm outta here.

"We're pulling up your cell phone records," he went on, ignoring the fact that Ted Belkins was pale and sweating, sitting behind the simple table in Interrogation Room Two. It was exactly how Don wanted him, nervous and off-guard and ready to react without thinking. It wouldn't be long before Belkins cracked, and it would be much easier if it happened before the rent-a-lawyer arrived, courtesy of the Public Defender's office.

They hadn't charged him. Not yet; this was classified as questioning a presumed innocent person of interest. It would still be too easy for the man to walk, and they needed more evidence in the category of 'air-tight'. Belkins wasn't clear on that concept, and Don wasn't about to enlighten him until he had to. In the meantime, Don would nibble around the edges until the fatal something dropped. Pouncing would occur at that moment like a kitten onto a stray ball of yarn and with infinitely more satisfying results. Yet there was something not quite right with this situation, something that was shrieking _wrong one_ to Don. What was that resolution of his, something about promising to listen to his gut?

"Go ahead," Belkins challenged, trying to prove that he had a pair of brass ones. It would have come across much better if a tear wasn't threatening to escape from his eye. "I haven't called any terrorists recently, if that's what you're looking for."

"Nope. Just a company that sells stuff for making bombs," Don said with false cheer. "Not gonna tell me that you loaned your cell to terrorists just to be helpful, are you?"

"Maybe." Belkins saw a way out. "Maybe I lost my phone for a couple of hours, then found it…" His voice trailed off. Then—"I did."

"Did what?" Don went on point. This was information.

"My phone." Belkins was thinking furiously. "It was, like, three weeks ago. I thought that I'd lost it somewhere, then someone found it outside of the history building and got it back to me. I was ready to cancel the number, and then it was found. Jimmy DeLuca found it; you can ask him."

"Three weeks ago?" Don crossed to the door. "Wait here." As if Belkins was going to be allowed to go anywhere else without an armed escort.

Megan and Colby were waiting for him outside of Interrogation Room Two. "Colby, you got the records yet?"

"Right here, Don." Colby proffered the print out. "I circled the call that went to the company that sells the titanium tetrachloride. It fits, Don. We got him. He bought the titanium tet, he's the right size and shape of one of the two suspects, and he has no alibi for any of the crimes. Sitting in a library, pouring through old books, no witnesses, doesn't do it for me. I say we charge him."

"I don't know, Don." Megan was on the other side. "I agree, it looks bad for him, but he's not behaving like someone who is guilty. His body posture says innocent."

"He could be a really good actor," Colby argued. "We've seen it before."

"He'd have to be a sociopath to do it this well," was Megan's opinion, "and that's not consistent with his status as student. If he were a sociopath, we'd see something in his home, something to suggest that he'd come into a lot of money. We'd see some physical evidence to support the idea."

"Look at the print-out," Colby pushed. "I mean, he nailed the date for the phone call to purchase the titanium tet, Don. Three weeks ago, that's when that call was made. Most people will be off by a week or so, not right on the money. Tell me that was by accident. He knew what he was saying."

"Unless he really is innocent." Megan wasn't ready to let go. "What if someone really did snatch his cell, make the call using Ramghava's credit card, and then put it back where someone would return it to Belkins? What better way to divert us from the real suspect?"

"It's devious," Colby started to say.

Don cut him off. "All three crimes have been devious. They've been using the devil dust to knock everyone out of their gourd, to keep from being known. _Devious_ is consistent with their MO." He listened to his gut, and came to a decision. "Let him go. For now."

"Don—" Colby tried to protest.

"For now," Don repeated, "but let's put some surveillance on him. And on Professor Ramghava," he added, thinking furiously.

"Don?"

"Win-win situation," he mused. "We know that they're involved. Somebody may be using either one or both for their own purpose, but they're still involved and that may lead us to the real suspects. Look at the possibilities," he instructed his team. "One or more of our suspects comes in contact with the perpetrators, the pair that Charlie has given us the heights and weights for. Belkins is either a suspect or a dupe, but in either case he came in contact with whoever had the opportunity to lift his phone and put it back. Let's check out this Jimmy DeLuca guy that he fingered."

"I'm on it, Don," Colby piped up, before Don could offer the non-desk task to anyone else.

Don grinned. "It's yours," he agreed, leading the pair to the elevator. "Let's go back upstairs and get Charlie to print out a copy of this DeLuca kid's picture. It sounds like he's another student at CalSci. Megan, run a background check on DeLuca. Let's see what we're dealing with. Oh, and give me a psych profile on Belkins," he added.

"You're not really thinking—"

"I'm not sure what I'm thinking," Don said. The elevator pinged, indicating that it had now arrived and was willing to take on passengers. "But we gotta face facts, Megan. Belkins fits the physical profile of one of Charlie's suspects. I'm gonna estimate that he's five-ten, weighs about one hundred and fifty. He's been studying the Deshwanee, so he could have run across some reference to this dust stuff and tried it out. He needs the money; he's looking at something like a hundred grand just to get through grad school, never mind what kind of job he could get for all of that study. Even the cell phone explanation could be a story. He could have tossed it into the bushes, intending to claim that he'd lost it, only his friend found it and returned it to him and there's his alibi for the phone call. It fits, Megan. It's a working hypothesis. What the—?" he broke off, his attention caught above.

The lights flickered, and went off. They tried to come back on, and once again flickered out.

As far as providing an aid to vision, it didn't much matter. This was Los Angeles, in the middle of the day, in a building that single-handedly tried to keep the window making industry afloat. There was plenty of ambient light provided, free of charge.

That wasn't the point. This was the building that was run by and housed the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an organization that was tasked with the security of the United States of America. It was supposed to be immune from the vagaries of the power grid. It was supposed to have its own supply of power that would kick in to keep the basics going, basics such as emergency lighting so that the guards in the lobby could reasonably expect to repel anyone who decided that an assault would be a fine way to let the world know that they were unhappy.

The secondary emergency power finally went on, and the corridor took on an eerie red light from the emergency lights in the corners of the corridor. Power lines hummed. An emergency klaxon screamed, alerting everyone that this was not a drill. Field agents stationed on the floor came alive, pulling weapons and half heading for the lobby, the other half aimed for the Interrogation suite in case this presumed assault was for the purpose of liberating someone undeserving of the honor.

In any other situation, Don and the other two would have followed suit. Protocol called for them to likewise arm themselves and prepare to defend the acquisitions in the Interrogation Room cells so that justice could continue to be served. It was the responsibility for any field agent who was currently working on the floor, doing interrogations, or who had even just dropped down onto this floor because the restroom above was a bit on the busy side.

Don knew better. "Stairs," he directed tersely, a word not needed since all three had hit the door to the staircase running. They burst out onto the floor where their cubicles were, where Charlie and Larry were, where the rest of the evidence was.

At first, nothing looked any more _off_ than could be expected. Agents were at their desks. The computer screens were blank, but with only secondary power available that was to be expected. Special Agent Murphy still had a stack of flimsies huddled on the floor beside his desk; the man was sloppy enough to rival Charlie, only Murphy failed to display the same gift for his work. One more disciplinary action, Don knew, and Murphy was headed for a one way trip through the front lobby.

That wasn't important. What was of far greater impact was the scent that slapped all three of them as they emerged from the stairwell.

It was a distinct, dusky smell, one that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He knew that scent, and knew that it foretold of something dire.

It was that damn dust. Don would never forget that smell if he lived to be one hundred and eighty, of which there was little chance if he continued on with his present profession.

There were only two ways that the odor could have arrived on this floor. One, someone in Gatsbacher's lab had accidentally released a gallon container of the stuff and it had gotten into the ventilation ducts. That was unlikely because a) there was no one currently flipping the lab as a crime scene because the remaining lab rats were in their own labs running the evidence and Larry, the only non-forensics person allowed in, was on this very floor sleeping off the effects of some classy narcotics and b) if that was the case then the dust would be floating through every floor and not just this one. Rule out option one.

The second way that would put that particular smell into the air was if someone—a Deshwanee or two, perhaps?—had used it to incapacitate everyone around in order to—

More likely. Don didn't bother completing any more thoughts. There wasn't time. One or more of the suspects was in the building, and he was after Charlie and Larry.

The dust teased at his thoughts, threatening to stop the process of _thinking_ altogether. "Protect yourselves!" he ordered, dashing to the water fountain on the wall. He splashed some water onto his shirt and pulled it up over his nose and mouth as a makeshift gas mask.

The other two immediately understood what he was doing and followed his lead, grabbing paper towels and dousing them with water. Colby handed a wad of wet paper towels to Don.

"Larry!" Megan had a double priority.

"Go." Don would head for his brother. "Colby, secure the floor."

It was just as he'd feared. The trio burst into the bullpen, and the scene was eerily still. Not one person there was moving. There was David, sitting at his desk, frozen in the act of leaning over a sheaf of papers, pointing something out to an equally frozen Professor Ramghava. Three other field agents had been arrested in a casual grouping, holding steaming mugs of coffee that were growing cold rapidly.

What they didn't see were any five foot ten, one hundred fifty pound black-masked suspects. There were no shadowy figures looming over the helpless and unaware FBI agents, bent on removing evidence in whatever fashion seemed most expedient. Had they come and gone? Or had Don and the others arrived before the intruders came to take advantage of their victims' helplessness?

The main power slipped back on, and the overhead lights flickered back into operation, pouring better light onto the scene. More whirrings of sound indicated that power had been restored to the multitude of computers, as well. One of the cameras clicked irritably above their heads.

Things needed to happen, and needed to happen fast. Colby pulled the alarm on the wall, summoning help to this floor. Megan dashed off toward her own cubicle, and Don knew her target and approved. He headed for his own cubicle for his own target:

Charlie.

His brother was frozen, just like everyone else around, bent over the loaner laptop that David had brought to him, not moving. No dark figure hovered over him, armed or otherwise.

All right, until proven wrong, Don was going to move on the premise that the suspects were still on their way up from the ground level. He was also going to assume that help would not be arriving soon, that the perpetrators had likely used the same devil dust to incapacitate the guards at the front entrance in order to gain entrance and liberally dusted everyone else that they met on their way up to this level in search of Charlie and Larry. He was going to be ready to defend the people on this floor against whoever was attacking with this devil dust as the first wave.

"Megan?" he called out. "Colby?"

"Larry's okay," Megan called back, relief uppermost.

"This is just like the bank," was Colby's grim response. "Man, they're out!" He coughed, trying to keep the dust from settling into his nose. "Damn dust."

"Wipe the dust off of them," Don ordered. "Get them clean, and maybe they'll come around faster. Let's get them out of here." He put his own instructions into action, using the wet paper towel in his hand to swab down his brother's face. "Get somebody to turn up the ventilation. Damn stuff may still be in the air."

"It's working, Don," Colby said. "David, man, wake up!" He slapped the field agent lightly, trying for a response. David muttered something unintelligible, his breathing quickening.

"Larry's still out, but I think it's as much the pain-killers as anything." Megan was worried.

"Don't take any chances. Let's get some ambulances here, and we'll get everyone to the hospital. Where are the damn guards?" Don asked irritably, fearing that he knew the answer. Maybe the Deshwanee had indeed incapacitated the main guard contingency in the lobby. Not a bad plan for an assault. "C'mon, Charlie, wake up, dammit!"

Charlie's head lolled bonelessly in Don's hands, the computer beeping irritably when the keys were accidentally pressed.

The door to the stairwell crashed open, and a squad of flak-jacketed guards advanced into the bullpen, guns ready. "Eppes?" the lead guard bellowed.

"Over here!" Don snarled. "Gas! You got masks?"

"Masks on," the lead guard ordered his men, ready for this eventuality. Gas masks had been part of the uniform since Gatsbacher's murder. They were prepared.

"Search the floor and secure it," Don instructed, coughing, accepting an extra gas mask from the lead guard. "We walked into this. I don't know if the suspects are here."

"Fan out. Clear the area." The guards swarmed over the bullpen, intent on business.

Don turned back to his brother. David, he saw out of the corner of his eye, was beginning to wake up, a confused and worried expression on his face. Megan appeared at the entrance to her cubicle, the paper towel still pressed to her nose and mouth, and Don knew that she wouldn't be there watching the excitement if Larry wasn't all right. She accepted a gas mask for herself, slipping in on over her head.

_Dammit, Charlie, wake up!_ Had his brother gotten a bigger dose of the stuff? Were they going to have to cart him at screaming siren speeds to the hospital and shove tubes down his throat like they did to Don himself after the disaster at the bank? Don used the moistened paper towel to wipe the dust off of Charlie—and stared.

There was something dark at Charlie's waist, and it wasn't his belt. It was wet and sticky, and it came away onto Don's fingers.

It was blood.

The Deshwanee had gotten in.

* * *

"Chuck, don't try to talk. We're taking you to an ambulance."

Don's face was bobbing somewhere above him. Charlie blinked, trying and failing to make his brother's features come clear. _I wasn't aware that I was trying to talk, Don._

"Just keep breathing. Don't give up, Charlie!"

_But it hurts. And this stretcher ride isn't the most comfortable. When did someone put rocks and boulders on the floor of the FBI building?_

"Dammit, hurry!"

_I think I'm going to throw up_.

"Look out," said another voice with eerie calm. "He's getting shocky. You got that IV ready, Johnny?"

_Apparently Johnny does, or am I mistaking that sudden sharp pain at my elbow? Ouch! _

"Wide open," said another voice. "That liter should be in by the time we get to County."

"Give him something for the pain!" Don demanded.

_Oh. Is that me I hear moaning? I'm sorry, Don. I'll try to stop. There. Is that better?_

"He's going under, Roy. His pressure's dropping; I'm only getting sixty palp. Stay with us, guy."

_I'm really sorry about everything, Don. I'm sorry for making your life miserable when we were growing up. I'm sorry for taking Mom away from you when I went to Princeton. And I'm sorry for not telling you about this lead about the third suspect. If I had, we probably wouldn't be in this mess._

_Who am I kidding? _You're_ not in any mess. It's _me_ with the hole in my gut, courtesy of Indira Ramghava, and I can't even tell you that she did it._

_Damn, but it hurts!_

_I think I'm going to leave you now._


	12. Damn Good Timing

"Corridor's secure, Don." Colby met up with Don in the hospital waiting room down the corridor. "I got half a dozen men right outside the OR, all with gas masks."

"Good." It was just a noise, designed to indicate that he'd heard Colby's statement. There was nothing good about the situation, nothing wonderful that his brother the genius was fighting for his life a few feet away with a team of doctors and nurses and who knew what other types of experts working to stitch up the stab wound in his side.

Colby felt compelled to give his boss more pertinent details. "Megan's hit the road with Larry. She took a couple of guards with them, all of 'em supplied with gas masks. They'll hole up in one of the safe houses until you or I give her a call that it's safe. She thought, and I agreed, that it would be better if no one knew which safe house. Extra layer of protection."

Don grunted.

"David's downstairs, getting cleaned up and checked out along with the rest. That professor is there, too: Ramghava. They're all like the victims of the robberies, Don. They're all confused about what happened; can't remember a thing."

That didn't even elicit a grunt.

Colby sighed. "This is not your fault, Don."

"Really?" Don turned such a look of fury onto the younger man that, battle-hardened as he was, Colby quailed. "Mind telling me whose fault it is? I'm the one who insisted that Charlie come to the federal building for safety. I can't even keep my own brother safe in a building that was built for security! Nobody's safe, Colby! Not from this stuff! Do you have any idea how devastating this is to national security? What if terrorists get hold of this stuff? Nobody's safe, not even the president of the United States!"

Colby rallied. "All the more reason to solve this thing, Don. Who do you want me to go after? Should I release Belkins, have him tailed?"

"Don't bother," Don said bitterly. "He's not our man. It obviously wasn't him stabbing Charlie behind our backs. We were interrogating him at the time…" His voice trailed off.

"Don?"

"It wasn't him." The thoughts were flying inside of Don's mind. "He was in Interrogation Room Two at the time, and none of us were affected by the dust. That devil dust wasn't it the air. It only hit the floor where Charlie was. It wasn't Belkins," he repeated. "Next assumption: it was someone already in the building."

"I don't follow."

"It had to be, Colby." The words were snapping out faster and faster. "The guards in the lobby didn't have a clue that anything was going on until the lights went out. If you hadn't hit the alarm, they wouldn't have come for us on our floor." Don looked up at Colby. "Pull the security tapes. See if there's anything on them."

"Sorry, boss. First thing we thought of, and we've already heard from Security. The cameras went out, along with the power. They're still investigating that whole piece, and the preliminary stuff suggests that a cyber-attack was responsible for knocking out the power."

"A cyber-attack? That doesn't make sense. That whole secondary power grid system is a closed system, for just that reason. A virus can't be introduced from the outside. Someone would have to bring it in…"

"Don?" Colby prodded, when his boss went silent for a second time.

The lead was there. "Pull the tapes, Colby," Don repeated, eyes glittering. "Pull the tapes for the past twenty four hours. I want the names of everyone who entered the building who fits Charlie's parameters for the suspects, including our own people." He tightened his lips. "This was planned, the whole thing, Colby. Someone was after Charlie, and maybe Larry, and set up this whole thing. They arranged for the power to go down; they intended to attack during the confusion. They expected to remain unidentified by knocking out the power to the security cameras. What those guys didn't realize is that the number of suspects just got whittled down a whole bunch." Don glanced uneasily toward the operating room, where the wizard of numbers was still being worked on. _Charlie _would normally be doing that statistical whittling. "And have somebody look at the computer that Charlie was working on," he added. "There was a reason that Charlie wanted that thing. See what IT can pull off of it."

* * *

"How is he?" were the first words out of David Sinclair's mouth, as Don walked into the bullpen.

Don took his seat. "Holding. His docs are pretty hopeful, said the surgery went well. Still trying to get in touch with Amita to let her know; the conference officials will track her down and tell her to call as soon as they locate her. My dad's with Charlie right now—along with half the security force of the FBI."

"That doesn't surprise me," Colby piped up from across the table. "They're none too happy that this took place on their watch. They feel like they let us down, letting someone get that far inside the building. They're feeling responsible."

Don grunted. _He_ was feeling responsible, too. He changed the subject. "Go home, Sinclair. You look like crap." It was true. David Sinclair had been hit with a full dose of devil dust, and he looked as though he'd been through a firefight. Two cups of caffeine and a couple of hours at the same hospital where Charlie was hadn't begun to touch the damage. "Go home."

David glared at him, the creases heavy on his face. "_Not_ until we finish this, Don."

_Oh_, yeah. They were _pissed_. This had struck at the heart of the FBI, and there wasn't an agent in this room—or on this floor—or in this building—that wasn't out for blood.

That suited Don just fine. What would suit him even more would be coming up with a lead. "The security tapes?"

"We've got eighty-six suspects, and still going," Colby announced. "We widened the parameters a bit, since the tapes won't be as accurate as Charlie's program. We're looking for men that are five foot ten, plus or minus two inches, and are one hundred fifty pounds plus or minus twenty. You'll be happy to know that your name came up, but we ruled you out. We decided that sibling rivalry wasn't enough of a motive."

"Gee, thanks." The humor fell flat for all of them. "How about IT, and Charlie's laptop?"

That was David's chore. "Nothing, Don. The laptop was wiped this time; not a thing left on it. IT thinks that someone inserted a disk to wipe the hard drive clean and destroy the evidence. I've got agents going through all of the waste bins, to see if maybe whoever it was dumped the cleaning disk before leaving the building. IT also said that the most effective way to get a cyber-attack into the system to take out the power would be for someone to insert a flash drive onto the local network that handles the power grid. That would bypass all the external firewalls that we have, and goes along with someone entering the building to try to kill Charlie."

"We're checking—"

"Yes. I've pulled IT techs away from Charlie's laptop to look for the flash. I thought doing that would be faster than trying to hack Charlie's computer to see if there was anything left or hidden on it. Nothing yet, but they've only scanned two floors. They started in the lobby."

"Good. Keep 'em looking." Don continued to think. "I want to see the tapes of this floor."

"Don? The cameras weren't functioning. They won't show squat."

"I don't care. I just want to see what was going on, before and after." Don's gut was churning.

"You got a hunch?"

Yeah, he had a hunch. But all he said was, "nothing so formal as that, David. Let me see the tapes."

* * *

Don started the tape of the bullpen some half hour before the power went out. If there was something to be seen, it would likely be in that time period. He recognized the various players: there was Murphy, working furiously to reduce the size of the stack of papers beside his desk. He was succeeding, too, if Don remembered the stack height post-incident correctly. Too bad that Murphy had now been pulled away by the same case that they all were working on. Not a big deal; the area director would grant Murphy leniency under the circumstances.

David was there, too, working with Professor Ramghava. Their heads were bowed over papers, and even though Don couldn't see it from this angle he knew that those papers contained the list of purchases that had been made by the suspect credit card. There was no way to track exactly who had used the card; the transaction had been made by phone, with the purchaser reading off the numbers to the customer service representative. Even the address wasn't helpful. The package was mailed to Dr. Ramghava, but she had already said that she hadn't received it. Whoever had ordered it had undoubtedly intercepted it before questions could be asked. This was a well thought out plot.

The camera angle swiveled on. Megan was there, escorting Larry to her cubicle. The man staggered, leaning against Megan, his arm still in its sling. His mouth opened, and Don could hear the giggle that emerged even though the tape only showed sight and not sound. Don smiled grimly: thoroughly high on legally prescribed narcotics.

Don went through the tape, frame by frame, identifying everyone there. Agent Wells, desk in the corner, finished up an interview with a matronly woman and escorted her to the elevator. He clearly took the woman all the way to the lobby, because he didn't reappear on the tape until after the incident. Charlie himself emerged once from Don's cubicle, hit the john, and disappeared back inside to continue working on the loaner laptop. Shortly after that, Professor Ramghava too made a trip to the ladies' room.

The immediate events themselves were more interesting. Don watched grimly as the action in the bullpen slowed. Murphy picked up the next piece of paper, put it onto his desk—and stopped. His hand hovered over the keyboard, ready to strike, and moved no more for another frame. The camera angle switched, and Don couldn't tell if Murphy did anything else. Wait a sec; yes, he could. The camera came around for another pass over Murphy's desk, and Don could tell that the field agent was still frozen, hand poised over the keyboard.

It was the same for every person in the bullpen. David waited for Professor Ramghava to return from the ladies' room. Polanski emerged from the elevator and walked across the bullpen to his own cubicle—and stopped before he could get there. It was if some Hollywood director had yelled, "freeze!" and kept the cameras rolling.

Then the frames went black, and Don recognized this as when the power supply was cut off. The period of time was less than three minutes, but it had been enough time for someone to walk into Don's cubicle, slip a knife into his brother, and walk out. That took guts, and it took planning. Whoever it was came armed not only with a knife but with a mask to prevent themselves from being overcome by the dust. How the hell did they get it past security?

He flipped through the few frames that existed before the security cameras were re-powered, and compared the two scenes. It was exactly as it had been: Polanski took a step, and looked around, confused. Murphy's hand dropped downward, and a word appeared on the computer screen in front of him, trying to process the paperwork. David and Professor Ramghava were still pouring over the credit card transaction list when Don, Megan, and Colby burst out of the stairwell. Don watched himself stop and identify the odor in the air before the three dashed to their respective objectives.

Nothing. There was no furtive figure, either before or after, that had been caught on camera. Whoever had done this had timed it perfectly. The other option was that it was someone on this floor, but all the people who fit Charlie's parameters for the two suspects were agents that Don had worked with for years. He would sooner suspect himself than any of them, and Colby had already ruled out Don as a suspect. _Good thing; I can just see the motive. FBI agent stabs genius brother in fit of long-standing rage over refusal to help with eighth grade math homework_.

The rest of the tape was no help, either. Don ran it further, but he was able to identify every person on it as either belonging to the FBI with a reason to be there or a guest who had been frozen in place by the dust. His hunch wasn't panning out. He sighed, leaning tiredly back in his chair.

"Don?" It was David.

"Nothing." It hurt to say that. "You?"

"IT came up with a flash drive they think was used to interrupt the power," David told him. "They're checking it now. It was on the circuitry box, near the elevators and rest rooms. Not quite a flash drive, but something tech-ie. It did the trick."

"Prints?"

"Wiped clean."

Of course. It couldn't be as easy as that. "Where'd they find it? Which circuitry box?"

"This floor, Don," David said grimly.

"That's narrowing it down," Colby realized. "That means that it had to be someone on this level. The flash drive thing had to be stuck into the box before the cameras went out, or else the cameras wouldn't have gone out." He gestured toward the list of potential suspects. "I can eliminate like sixty people just from that, Don."

"Do that," Don started to say, when his cell signaled a call. He stared at it, cold stabbing his veins when he realized it was from his father. He fumbled with sudden terror, frantically trying to answer the call. "Dad? Charlie okay?"

"Better. They've taken the tubes out of his mouth."

"Good." The icicles flash-melted as though they'd been placed into a high-end microwave. It could have been a call saying that his brother's heart had stopped. It could have been a call that the world had come to an end some three minutes ago, and his father had just gotten around to notifying his eldest of that fact. "He waking up?"

"Not yet, but he's pretty restless. One of the nurses says she thinks he's trying to say something."

"What? What's he saying?"

"That's just it, Donnie. None of us can figure it out. Not me, not any of the nurses. I've even gotten the guards in here. Nothing. His voice isn't working much, they say, because of the tubes they jammed into his throat."

"I'll be over." Decision made. It was one of the easiest decisions he'd ever made in his life. He turned to David and Colby. "Keep at it. Charlie's waking up, might be able to tell us something."

* * *

Don pulled the Suburban into the parking slot, belatedly realizing that his flawless driving had been due to auto-pilot. His brain had been occupied, churning over and over the events that just occurred. He cringed, berating himself for not paying attention, for letting this situation get to him. How had they done it, yet not left so much as a trace? Don couldn't help himself; the details of the case kept repeating themselves over and over in his mind until he wanted to scream with rage.

Fact: the flashdrive thing had been found on the circuitry panel just outside the elevators.

Fact: the flashdrive thing had to have been in place in order to shut the power, and hence the cameras, down.

Conclusion: someone had walked by the elevators and inserted the flashdrive while the cameras were swiveling in a different direction. Damn good timing. Probably wasn't luck.

Next fact: somebody wanted Charlie out of the way. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put his brother out of the way, and had tried to make it permanent. Someone had done the very same thing to Gatsbacher, and succeeded. Why?

The obvious answer was that each of them had evidence that would lead to the eventual exposure of the suspects. Even Larry; it could have been a routine mugging, foiled by the victims' unanticipated defensive moves, but Don wasn't taking any chances.

He entered the front lobby of the hospital and crossed over to the bank of elevators, waiting impatiently for one to arrive, wondering what it was that he'd missed. There had to be a reason that the perpetrators were going after the forensics evidence and the researchers who worked with it. Usually if a suspect was nervous that the feds were closing in, they'd target the _agents_ working the case. Witnesses likewise were a popular bunch to shoot at. Yet none of the witnesses here were being threatened. All of the witnesses to all three crimes were befuddled by the dust. There was no danger to them.

He stepped out onto the third floor, walking past the nurses' station. He spotted his father in the corridor, sipping a cup of coffee, chatting with one of the guards. The guard had his gas mask in his hand, ready to slip it back on, Don noted. Good. Dust or no dust, nobody was going to get past these guards for another crack at Charlie.

"Dad," he greeted his father.

Alan Eppes looked old, Don realized. Fear had etched deep crevices into his father's face, lines that had started when Eppes senior had realized that his eldest son had selected a career that might cost him his life. Those lines had deepened over this; his youngest wasn't supposed to be part of that fear.

It wasn't as bad as when Alan had come rushing in from the airport a few hours ago. That had been terror, only partially relieved by David meeting him there and hustling him across town with the illicit use of sirens. Both Don and David would likely pay for that little indiscretion, but neither one cared.

It was better now. Charlie was waking up, and that was a good sign. What would be even better would be when Don could say conclusively that the suspects had been apprehended, and both Charlie and Larry were safe.

"Donnie. You're here," his father responded. "Good."

"He say anything while I was driving over?"

"He tried to," Alan told him. "Something like 'three' or maybe 'third'. That mean anything to you?"

"No." Don frowned.

"Oh? He seemed pretty insistent about it, right up until the morphine kicked in." Alan too turned the corners of his mouth downward. "I take it this means that you still haven't made any progress. Can you tell me about it?"

"I think I'd better. Watch out for any five foot ten, one hundred fifty pound men." Don gestured at the FBI guards who lined the corridors far enough away from each other that if one was affected by the devil dust through a gas mask, another would recognize the danger and react. "You'll notice that everyone here is over six feet tall."

"Except for Becky, on the end," his father pointed out. "She's only five foot four or so."

"Yeah. She's also not a guy," Don acknowledged. "None of 'em look like our potential suspects. Charlie awake?" he asked, changing the subject. "You think he'll be able to say anything?"

"His morphine should be wearing off soon, according to what the nurses said," Alan agreed. "That's what I told Professor Ramghava."

"Who?" Don stopped short.

"Professor Ramghava," Alan repeated. "She said she was working the case with Charlie, that he'd consulted her. The guards said the same thing. Something about some Indiana Jones type cult."

It _clicked_. The scenes from the security cameras that he'd just reviewed flashed through his brain, and the piece of evidence that he'd overlooked.

Professor Indira Ramghava had been with David, reviewing the credit card transactions. She had left David's desk for the ladies' room. Then the tape had stopped. All very innocent.

When the security tape had resumed, it showed the professor back at David's desk, apparently frozen by the same dust that had frozen everyone else. There was one problem with that, however: the previous frames of security footage had everyone else already unmoving before she returned.

How the hell had Indira Ramghava gotten back to her seat without noticing that everyone had turned into statues?

Why had Charlie's computer been targeted for destruction, along with its user?

The number 'three' suddenly took on a much greater significance. There weren't just _two_ suspects. There were _three_.

Don could bet that he already knew the height and weight of suspect number three, and those parameters would be well outside the usual height and weight of most Americans.

"Stay here!" he snapped at his father. "Taylor, DeMeo, you're with me! Move!"

If Special Agent Don Eppes was wrong, he'd look like a fool. If he was right, he'd advance the field of mathematics by whatever monumental strides his brother would make over the next several decades by preventing the murder of the man.

Don Eppes wasn't wrong.

They burst into the room. Indira Ramghava was there, her hand on the dials of one of the machines, persuading it to deliver more morphine than was healthy for a man with a hole in his gut. Charlie's face was white, too weak to resist. His eyes, his face, his entire body was drooping under the onslaught of the narcotic overdose.

"Hold it right there!" Don snapped.

Ramghava wasn't yet finished. Her hand darted into her pocket, pulling out a small flask—

Don didn't let her open it. He grabbed her wrist, hoisting it into the air before she could uncork the stopper. One whiff of that devil dust, and they'd all freeze until it wore off. One whiff of that dust, and there would be no one to stop the morphine from racing through Charlie's veins until it killed him. Don hung onto her wrist, trying not to break the bones. _What the hell, Eppes? Stop the bitch!_ Ramghava shrieked in pain and rage and tried to pull away.

Don wouldn't let her. He yanked the flask from her hand, allowing the two guards to move in and secure the suspect.

More important: Charlie. His brother was no longer breathing.

"Get somebody in here!" Don yelled.


	13. Epilog

"We got 'em, Don," David reported, striding into the hospital waiting room, Colby behind him. "There were two of them, both matching Charlie's parameters for the suspects. They were hiding out in Ramghava's house, getting ready to flee the country. We're still trying to identify them. The fingerprints should come through any time, now."

"They resist?"

"Not much," Colby said, making it clear that he really wished that they'd resisted a lot more. It would have gone a long way to assuaging the feelings of a huge gang of FBI agents. There had been too much damage on this one, and it had hit too close to home: two researchers heavily bruised and dented, and the Fiend from Forensics would no longer rain curses upon their heads. Don never thought that the day would come when he'd miss the obscenities. _It did, Eppes. That day is here. You lost a damn good forensics lab rat. Your case, your loss, your fault for not putting the pieces together fast enough. You're going to have to live with that fact for the rest of your career and the rest of your life. Welcome to reality._

Colby looked grim. "We found some of the jewelry in the basement of Ramghava's place. They were packing it up for transport."

"Probably going to try to smuggle it out of the country, and then sell it where it wouldn't be quite so hot," David offered. He changed the subject to one infinitely more difficult. "Charlie?"

Both Don and Alan's faces darkened. "They're still working on him," Don said grimly. "Wait—there's his doc."

"Mr. Eppes?" The man in green scrubs wasted no time.

"Is he—?" Alan couldn't form the words.

"He's going to be all right."

_Nothing_ mattered more than that.

* * *

_The area of an oval is calculated by pi times 'a' times 'b', where 'a' equals half the length of the horizontal axis and 'b' equals half the length of vertical axis_. Assuming that the face fading in and out above him was twelve inches by six inches, that made the area of Don's face 56.54 inches, topped off by a short shock of dark hair, the length of which Charlie declined to estimate because his eyes weren't working at all well.

Don! Don needed to know that there was a third suspect, and that the third suspect was—

A short and worried chuckle slipped into Charlie's ear. It was a chuckle that he recognized, that he'd heard for a substantial part of his life growing up.

"I know, Buddy. It's okay. We got her."

Charlie took a deep breath, sighing, disliking the plastic smell that permeated the whistling oxygen that filled the mask over his nose and mouth. It had taken all of his strength simply to take that breath, and he felt himself sinking back into blackness. He couldn't keep his eyes open.

At least the smell wasn't that dust stuff.

Don was here. It was okay.

* * *

"Just hang onto me," Don encouraged, making sure that he had a firm grasp on his brother's arm across his shoulder. "Colby's on your other side."

"I should never have let you talk me into getting up out of bed," Charlie muttered. His knees buckled, but it didn't matter. The two FBI agents weren't about to let him fall. They hoisted him into the living room, not at all worried at sharing Charlie's meager weight between them, depositing him carefully onto the sofa. Colby wouldn't let Charlie sit upright either, making him lay back against some pillows while David lifted his weak as jelly legs onto the long expanse of cushions. Don tucked a crocheted afghan over his brother, stifling the memory that went along the handmade piece. _You made that, Mom, when I was twelve. It took you six months, in between taking care of Charlie and me. You're still taking care of us, even though you're gone_.

Larry, in the chair opposite, didn't offer to help. The sling was gone, although his hand was still encased in a somewhat smaller set of bandages. Megan perched protectively over him on the arm of the chair.

"You look much improved, Charles," Larry observed.

"Thanks. You, too, Larry. How's your hand?"

"Significantly better, although I believe that I shall delegate any writing needs to my students for at least another week to ten days," Larry sighed. "One never quite recognizes the amount of hand usage that one engages in until that usage is not available." He flexed his fingers as much as he was able, wincing. "I fear that mundane tasks such as eating are as much as I can manage for the moment."

"With help," Megan added.

Larry looked up at her, and smiled. "With help," he agreed.

Charlie sighed. "I can't believe that it turned out to be Indira Ramghava," he said. "I mean, she was a CalSci professor! What motive could she possibly have had?"

Don shrugged. "Same as most other criminals: money," he said. "Her graduate student, Ted Belkins, came across the references to the Deshwanee in some of the old tomes that he was studying. Apparently some CalSci philanthropist picked some up and donated them onto the bookshelves, and the librarians didn't realize what they had. Ted started to translate one, and brought it to Ramghava's attention. Her ancient Sanskrit was a great deal better than his, and she recognized immediately what it was that she had: a recipe for making that devil dust stuff. She pushed Ted toward some of the other references, and kept that one for herself."

Colby took up the tale. "The two suspects that you fingered, Charlie, are friends of hers, maybe relatives. We're still working out the exact relationship. She enlisted them to be the core group. Just like you suspected, they hired additional help when they needed it to carry out each job. One of her people served in the Indian army for a while, and that's where he learned his bomb-making expertise. He was the one who got her to purchase stuff to make a bomb that would have no trace elements to lead us to them. The bombs were a little crude, but they got the job done. Just like the knife that she slipped into the FBI building: crude, and made of wood or ceramic so that it wouldn't set off any alarms. It looked like some kind of Indian jewelry that she wore in her hair. We haven't found it, and we're thinking that she probably ditched it somewhere. Same thing with the dust; she probably pumped it into the air as she walked toward the rest room. By the time she got to the circuit board, everybody was starting to freeze."

"She might have burned her tools in the fireplace in her home," Megan mused. "That would be the best way to eliminate all traces."

"We're still going after the hirelings," David added. "We've got names and addresses, and it's only a matter of time before we get them. One of them is the man who broke in on Gatsbacher. Ramghava paid him extra to murder Gatsbacher, and gave him some of the dust to make it easy. We think she was afraid that Gatsbacher was going to figure out how to make the stuff, and from there it wouldn't be all that difficult to come up with an antidote. She wanted it for herself. After she made enough money to leave the country, she was going to relocate in a part of the world where she could set up shop, and sell her dust to whoever had a need to commit a crime without witnesses. She was actually going to resurrect the cult of the Deshwanee—for a price."

"Not gonna happen." Of that, Don was certain. "We found the reference book among her things, and it is now on its way to Washington for study by our own people. It's not going to see the light of day for a long time. Apparently there were a lot of recipes in it, for a lot of different things. That devil dust wasn't the only thing that people would want to look at. There were also a couple of pages on how to resurrect the dead, how to cure some long gone illness, that sort of thing."

"I suppose that's a good thing," Larry said doubtfully, "although the scholar in me shudders at the concept of refusing knowledge to anyone. Ah, Alan. That smells good."

"It should." Alan Eppes entered, a tray in his hands, and set the food onto the coffee table. "Like I promised: lasagna. Not for you, Charlie," he scolded. "Didn't you hear the doctor? Broth, for another day or two."

"But—"

"Not a chance, Charlie," Don said, grabbing the plate of lasagna before Charlie could get his hands on it and passing it off to Megan. "Makes you want to heal up even faster, doesn't it? Although then we'll expect you to work on a report."

"I'm a consultant. I don't write case file reports," Charlie sniffed, accepting the bowl of broth from his father. It wasn't clear whether the disdain was for case file reports—or the broth.

"You do for this one," Don informed him, handing the next plate to Colby, watching his father dish out additional plates for the others. "We need yours, and the autopsy report on Gatsbacher."

David frowned. "Is the autopsy report still not in? Who's the M.E.? What's keeping him from finishing up?"

"Good question." Don swallowed the food in his mouth so that he could speak. He glanced at his watch; it was still early but he'd gotten everyone over during the late afternoon so that they could see Charlie before his kid brother crashed for the night. It had been so close! It hurt to see the man so weak. Don had moved in for the next few days so that he could help his old man take care of Charlie, and it was needed. His brother couldn't even stumble to the john without help, and Alan Eppes himself was getting on in years.

Don went back to the question at hand: Gatsbacher's autopsy. The case file couldn't be closed without it—it would offend Gatsbacher's misbegotten forensic soul. "Let me see." He dialed the number of the coroner's office. It wasn't on his cell, but he still knew the number by heart. "Yo, doc. What's keeping the report on Gatsbacher?" Pause. "What? What's that you say?"

There was another pause, longer this time. The others leaned forward. What was going on?

"You're kidding."

No, the coroner was not kidding.

"Okay, doc. Uh, keep me posted. Hang on a sec." Don covered over the phone. "You're not going to believe this, guys, but Gatsbacher's body has disappeared. Vanished. Poof, into the air."

"What?"

"How did that happen?"

"No way, dude. Gatsbacher was dead. I saw the body myself."

"What kind of sick joke is this? Did Gatsbacher suddenly come back to life and walk out of the morgue?"

Don lifted his shoulders uncomfortably. "Beats me, guys. I saw the body, too. Looked dead to me." He spoke back into the phone. "We'll look into it, doc. Oh, and doc? If we find the body, I got one question for you.

"Was Gatsbacher a man or a woman?"


	14. Post Script

_Several nights later..._

_

* * *

Ring. Ring._

His hand fumbled with the receiver, dropping it to the carpet.

"_Fleinhardt!_ Pick up the damn phone!"

Larry put it to his ear, requiring two attempts to get the receiver to the correct location. "Are you…aware…_snore_…that it is after three AM? Who is this?"

"Who the hell do you think it is? Peter Pan? Get real and wake up, Fleinhardt!"

"Who is this?" Suspiciously. "If this is some sort of obnoxious freshman prank—"

"I don't play half-assed jokes, Fleinhardt. If I'm going to play a joke, it's going to damn well be as funny as hell."

Long pause. "Gatsbacher?"

"Took you damn long enough, _Fleinhardt_. It's only been a week since the end of the case. Your brains turn to oatmeal that fast?"

Another long pause. A _very_ long pause. "You're dead."

Snarl, with a string of vicious-sounding words which Larry rather thought might be Norwegian, or possibly Finnish. It certainly wasn't German. "Do I _sound_ dead to you?"

"But…the body? _Your_ body?"

"You see it anywhere?"

"Uh…no."

"You got an autopsy report?"

"The coroner said the body disappeared." Larry was finally waking up, and it wasn't pretty.

"Damn right it disappeared. Like I'm gonna stick around for that punk-assed medical examiner to cut me open? Dipstick doesn't bother to sharpen his blades. Asshole."

"How…?"

"Figure it out, _Fleinhardt_. You got all the details you need. Oh, and don't throw out the tales the monks told you. Those Deshwanee may have been bastards, but they were _smart _bastards. I'd say that they knew a hell of a lot more than _you_, but that's not hard to accomplish, _Fleinhardt_."

"Where are you? What do you want me to tell Don? And Charles?" Larry correctly deduced that not only were events getting away from him, but that he'd never controlled them in the first place.

"Tell 'em whatever you damn well please, _Fleinhardt_. Just let Eppes know that when he least wants it, I'll be in his face again."

Click.

Larry stared at the phone in his hand. Then he stared at the clock. Then at the phone once more.

It had been a dream. A nightmare. It hadn't been real. It couldn't _possibly_ have been real. Gatsbacher was dead. Don had said so. Don had said that Gatsbacher had taken his—or her, or whatever's—last breath in front of Don himself.

Oh? Then why was there an ID badge on Larry's nightstand, one with a white-faced, greasy-haired individual scowling back at the world, when that badge was supposed to be securely locked away at FBI Headquarters?

Larry deliberately turned over in bed and closed his eyes, hoping that when the sun rose the badge would have vanished like the figments of his nightmare. There was also the forlorn hope that he might return to the Land of Nod, instead of obsessively musing over the figments of his imagination that had just disturbed his slumber.

Reality would need to wait until morning, when he could cope with the impossible.

* * *

A/N: What? You thought I was going to toss away a really neat character like Gatsbacher?

I don't know when, but Gatsbacher will make a return appearance. He/she/it still has more secrets to reveal; gender, for one, and the circumstances revolving around a 'miraculous' recovery...


End file.
